t patriotic duty ever engender an
enmity against the living: but there is a special satisfaction in
turning to those recollections with which no human infirmity can connect
any feeling save that of good will; and it is scarcely possible to
recall them in this instance without a hope that the sacred bonds which
united those two countries at that remote period may be a pledge for
reciprocated benefits in the ages yet before us. For both countries that
early time was a time of wonderful spiritual greatness. In noble rivalry
with Ireland England also sent her missionaries to far lands; and a
child of Wessex, St. Boniface, brought the Faith to Germany, by which it
was eventually diffused over Scandinavia, thus, by anticipation,
bestowing the highest of all gifts on that terrible race the Northmen,
in later centuries the scourge of his native land.

At home both islands were filled with saints whose names have ever since
resounded throughout Christendom. Both islands, as a great writer[21]
has told us, 'had been the refuge of Christianity, for a time almost
exterminated in Christendom, and the centres of its propagation in
countries still heathen. Secluded from the rest of Europe by the stormy
waters in which they lay, they were converted just in time to be put in
charge with the sacred treasures of Revelation, and with the learning of
the old world, in that dreary time which intervened between Gregory and
Charlemagne. They formed schools, collected libraries, and supplied the
Continent with preachers and teachers.' He remarks also that 'There was
a fitness in the course of things that the two peoples who had rejoiced
in one prosperity should drink together the same cup of suffering:
_Amabiles, et decori in vita sua, in morte non divisi_;' and he proceeds
to remind us that, immediately after their participation in that common
religious greatness, they partook also a tragic inheritance. In England
for two centuries and a half, in Ireland for a longer period, the
Northmen were repulsed but to reappear. Again and again the sons of Odin
blackened the river-mouths of each land with their fleets; wherever they
marched they left behind them the ashes of burned churches and
monasteries, till, in large parts of both, Christianity and learning had
well nigh perished, and barbarism had all but returned. In both
countries domestic dissensions had favoured the invader; eventually in
both the Danish power broke down; but in both and in each