Saxons of the West: but the declining age of the hero was embittered by popular ingratitude and domestic misfortunes.

The events of his life are less interesting than the singular revolutions of his fame. During a period of five hundred years the tradition of his exploits was preserved and rudely embellished by the obscure bards of Wales and Brittany, who were odious to the Saxons and unknown to the rest of mankind. The pride and curiosity of the Norman conquerors prompted them to inquire into the ancient history. of Britain; they listened with fond credulity to the tale of Arthur, and eagerly applauded the merit of a prince who had triumphed over the Saxons, their common enemies. His romance, transcribed in the Latin of Jeffrey of Monmouth, and afterwards translated into the fashionable idiom of the times,13 was enriched with the various, though incoherent ornaments which were familiar to the experience, the learning, or the fancy of the twelfth century. The gallantry and superstition of the British hero, his feasts and tournaments, and the memorable institution of his Knights of the Round Table, were faithfully copied from the reigning manners of chivalry, and the fabulous exploits of Uther's son appear less incredible than the adventures which were achieved by the enterprising valour of the Normans. Pilgrimage and the holy wars 14 introduced into Europe the specious miracles of Arabian magic. Fairies and giants, flying dragons and enchanted palaces, were blended with the more simple fictions of the West; and the fate of Britain was made to depend on the art or the predictions of Merlin.15 Every nation embraced and adorned the popular romance of Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table: their names were celebrated in Greece and Italy, and the 13 The French tongue. 15 Merlin was fabled to be a great enchanter in Arthur's days, whose prophecies were held in honour through the middle ages.

14 The Crusades.

16

were

voluminous tales of Sir Lancelot and Sir Tristram devoutly studied by the princes and nobles, who disregarded the genuine heroes and historians of antiquity. At length the light of science and reason was rekindled; the talisman was broken; the visionary fabric melted into air; and by a natural, though unjust, reverse of the public opinion, the severity of historic criticism came to question the existence of Arthur.

III.

CONVERSION OF THE ENGLISH.

FREEMAN.

[The fight between the Britons and their invaders was a long and stubborn one; and it was not till the end of the sixth century that the eastern half of Britain had become a country of Englishmen. But these Englishmen were broken up into many separate tribes, and were far from being as yet a single people. To bring about their union. into one nation was the work of many hundred years; but the first great step made in it was the binding all the English tribes together in one Christian religion. At their conquest they had been heathen, worshipping Woden and other gods, from whom they believed their kings to have sprung, and thus their winning of Britain had driven Christianity from the land. But Gregory the Great, a bishop of Rome, who had long cherished the hope of converting them at last, sent a band of missionaries to Kent, one of the kingdoms which the English had set up in in Britain, whose King Æthelberht had married a Christian

16 Lancelot and Tristram were the two most famous knights in the fabled court of Arthur.

wife. Their conversion of Kent was a starting-point for the conversion of Britain.]

SOME time before Gregory became Pope, perhaps about the year 574, he went one day through the market at Rome, where, among other things, there were still men, women, and children to be sold as slaves. He there saw some beautiful boys who had just been brought by a slavemerchant, boys with a fair skin and long fair hair, as English boys then would have. He asked from what part of the world they came, and whether they were Christians or heathens. He was told that they were heathen boys from the Isle of Britain. Gregory was sorry to think that forms which were so fair without should have no light within, and he asked again what was the name of their nation. "Angles,' "1 he was told. "Angles," said Gregory;

they ought to be made

But of what province

"they have the faces of Angels, and fellow-heirs of the Angels in heaven. or tribe of the Angles are they?" "Of Deira," "2 said the merchant. "De irâ !" said Gregory: "then they must be delivered from the wrath of God. And what is the name of their King?" "Ella." "Ella; then Alleluia shall be sung in his land." Gregory then went to the Pope, and asked him to send missionaries into Britain, of whom he himself would be one, to convert the English. The Pope was willing, but the people of Rome, among whom Gregory was a priest and was much beloved, would not let him go. So nothing came of the matter for some while. We do not know whether Gregory was able to do anything for the poor little English boys whom he saw in the market, but he certainly never forgot his plan for converting the English people. After a while he became Pope him

3 De

"Angles" is the same word with our present word" English2 Deira was our present Yorkshire. ira" in Latin means from the wrath."

men."

self. Of course he now no longer thought of going into Britain himself, as he had enough to do at Rome. But he now had power to send others. He therefore presently sent a company of monks, with one called Augustine at their head, who became the first Archbishop of Canterbury, and is called the Apostle of the English. This was in 597. The most powerful king in Britain at that time was Æthelberht of Kent, who is said to have been lord over all the kings south of the Humber. This Æthelberht had done what was very seldom done by English kings then or for a long time after he had married a foreign wife, the daughter of Chariberht, one of the kings of the Franks in Gaul.4 Now the Franks had become Christians; so when the Frankish Queen came over to Kent, Ethelberht promised that she should be allowed to keep to her own religion without let or hindrance. She brought with her therefore a Frankish Bishop named Liudhard, and the Queen and her Bishop used to worship God in a little church near Canterbury called Saint Martin's, which had been built in the Roman times. So you see that both Æthelberht and his people must have known something about the Christian faith before Augustine came. It does not, however, seem that either the King or any of his people had at all thought of turning Christians. This seems strange when one reads how easily they were converted afterwards. One would have thought that Bishop Liudhard would have been more likely to convert them than Augustine, for, being a Frank, he would speak a tongue not very different from English, while Augustine spoke Latin, and, if he ever knew English at all, he must have learned it after he came into the island. I cannot tell you for certain why this was. Perhaps they did not think that a man who had merely

The Franks had conquered Roman Gaul as the English had conquered Roman Britain.

come in the Queen's train was so well worth listening to as one who had come on purpose all the way from the great city of Rome, to which all the West still looked up as the capital of the world.

So Augustine and his companions set out from Rome, and passed through Gaul,5 and came into Britain, even as Cæsar had done ages before. But this time Rome had sent forth men not to conquer lands, but to win souls. They landed first in the Isle of Thanet, which joins close to the east part of Kent, and thence they sent a message to King Æthelberht saying why they had come into his land. The King sent word back to them to stay in the isle till he had fully made up his mind how to treat them; and he gave orders that they should be well taken care of meanwhile. After a little while he came himself into the isle, and bade them come and tell him what they had to say. He met them in the open air, for he would not meet them in a house, as he thought they might be wizards, and that they might use some charm or spell, which he thought would have less power out of doors. So they came, carrying an image of our Lord on the Cross wrought in silver, and singing litanies as they came. And when they came before the King, they preached the Gospel to him and to those who were with him, telling them, no doubt, how there was one God, who had made all things, and how He had sent His Son Jesus Christ to die upon the cross for mankind, and how He would come again at the end of the world to judge the quick and the dead.

So King Æthelberht hearkened to them, and he made answer like a good and wise man. "Your words and promises," said he, "sound very good unto me; but they are new and strange, and I cannot believe them all at once, nor can I leave all that I and my fathers and the whole

5 Gaul here means modern France.