ected ways. Theodore was a scholar as well
as a bishop. Under his care a school grew up at Canterbury, full of
all the learning of the Roman world. That which distinguished this
school and others founded in imitation of it was that the scholars did
not keep their learning to themselves, but strove to make it helpful
to the ignorant and the poor. They learnt architecture on the
Continent in order to raise churches of stone in the place of churches
of wood. One of these churches is still standing at Bradford-on-Avon.
Its builder was Ealdhelm, the abbot of Malmesbury, a teacher of all
the knowledge of the time. Ealdhelm, learned as he was, let his heart
go forth to the unlearned. Finding that his neighbours would not
listen to his sermons, he sang to them on a bridge to win them to
higher things. Like all people who cannot read, the English of those
days loved a song. In the north, Caedmon, a rude herdsman on the lands
of the abbey which in later days was known as Whitby, was vexed with
himself because he could not sing. When at ale-drinkings his comrades
pressed him to sing a song, he would leave his supper unfinished and
return home ashamed. One night in a dream he heard a voice bidding him
sing of the Creation. In his sleep the words came to him, and they
remained with him when he woke. He had become a poet--a rude poet, it
is true, but still a poet. The gift which Caedmon had acquired never
left him. He sang of the Creation and of the whole course of God's
providence. To the end he was unable to compose any songs which were
not religious.

25. =Bede. 673--735.=--Of all the English scholars of the time Baeda,
usually known as 'the venerable Bede,' was the most remarkable. He was
a monk of Jarrow on the Tyne. From his youth up he was a writer on all
subjects embraced by the knowledge of his day. One subject he made his
own. He was the first English historian. The title of his greatest
work was the Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation. He told how
that nation had been converted, and of the fortunes of its Church; but
for him the Church included the whole nation, and he told of the
doings of kings and people, as well as of priests and monks. In this
he was a true interpreter of the spirit of the English Church. Its
clergy did not stand aloof from the rulers of the state, but worked
with them as well as for them. The bishops stepped into the place of
the heathen priests in the Witenagemots of the kings, and counsell