ry work had also begun. Within a century from the death of St.
Augustine, apostles from England had converted multitudes in Germany,
and St. Wilfrid had preached to the inhabitants of Friesland. Something,
moreover, had been done to retrieve the past. The Saxon kings made
amends for the wrongs inflicted by their ancestors upon the British
Celts, endowing with English lands the churches and convents founded by
them in Brittany. King Kenwalk of Wessex showed thus also a royal
munificence to the Celtic monastery of Glastonbury, only stipulating in
return that the British monks there, condoning past injuries, should
offer a prayer for him when they knelt at the tomb of King Arthur.

The England of the seventh century had been very gradually prepared for
that drama of many ages which had then its first rehearsal. In it three
races had a part. They were those of the native Britons, the Saxons who
had over-run the land, and the Irish missionaries. Rome, the last and
greatest of the old-world empires, had exercised more of an enfeebling
and less of an elevating influence among the British than among her
other subject races; but her great military roads still remained the
witnesses of her military genius; and many a city, some in ruin, were
records of her wealth and her arts. The Teutonic race in England, which
for centuries had maintained its independence against Rome, could not
forgive the Britons for having submitted to their hated foe, and
trampled on them the more ruthlessly because they despised them. Yet
they at least might well have learned to respect that race. It has been
well remarked that if the Britons submitted easily to Rome, yet of all
her subject races they made far the most memorable fight against that
barbaric irruption which swept over the ruins of her empire. For two
centuries that race had fought on. It still retained the whole of
Western Britain, Cornwall, Wales, and Strathclyde; while in other parts
of England it possessed large settlements. On the other hand, in matters
of spiritual concern the British race contrasted unfavourably with the
other races subjected by the barbarians. In France, Spain, and Italy,
the conquered had avenged a military defeat by a spiritual victory,
bringing over their conquerors to Christianity; and, as a consequence,
they had often risen to equality with them. In those parts of England,
on the contrary, where the British had submitted to the Pagan
conquerors, they by degrees ab