turing, agricultural, and
literary centres on a small scale. The monks boiled down the salt of the
brine-pits; they copied and illuminated manuscripts in the library; they
painted pictures not without rude merit of their own; they ran rhines
through the marshy moorland; they tilled the soil with vigour and
success. A new culture began to occupy the land--the culture whose
fully-developed form we now see around us. But it must never be
forgotten that in its origin it is wholly Roman, and not at all
Anglo-Saxon. Our people showed themselves singularly apt at embracing
it, like the modern Polynesians, and unlike the American Indians; but
they did not invent it for themselves. Our existing culture is not
home-bred at all; it is simply the inherited and widened culture of
Greece and Italy.

The most perfect picture of the monastic life and of early English
Christianity which we possess is that drawn for us in the life and
works of Baeda. Before giving any account, however, of the sketch which
he has left us, it will be necessary to follow briefly the course of
events in the English church during the few intervening years.

The Church of England in its existing form owes its organisation to a
Greek monk. In 667, Oswiu of Northumbria and Ecgberht of Kent, in order
to bring their dominions into closer connection with Rome, united in
sending Wigheard the priest to the pope, that he might be hallowed
Archbishop of Canterbury. No Englishman had yet held that office, and
the choice may be regarded as a symptom of growth in the native Church.
But Wigheard died at Rome, and the pope seized the opportunity to
consecrate an archbishop in the Roman interest. His choice fell upon one
Theodore, a monk of Tarsus in Cilicia, who was in the orders of the
Eastern church. The pope was particular, however, that Theodore should
not "introduce anything contrary to the verity of the faith into the
Church over which he was to preside." Theodore accepted Roman orders and
the Roman tonsure, and set out for his province, where he arrived after
various adventures on the way. His re-organisation of the young Church
was thorough and systematic. Originally England had been divided into
seven great dioceses, corresponding to the principal kingdoms (save only
still heathen Sussex), and having their sees in their chief towns--East
and West Kent, at Canterbury and Rochester; Essex, at London; Wessex, at
Dorchester or Winchester; Northumbria, at York; East An