The Pleasures of England | Page 6

am not able myself to form any
opinion--and it is, I think, unnecessary for students of history to form
any, until they are able to estimate clearly the benefits, and mischief, of
the civil law of Europe in its present state. But to Clovis, Theodoric,
and St. Benedict, without any question, we owe more than any English
historian has yet ascribed,--and they are easily held in mind together,
for Clovis ascended the Frank throne in the year of St. Benedict's birth,
481. Theodoric fought the battle of Verona, and founded the
Ostrogothic Kingdom in Italy twelve years later, in 493, and thereupon
married the sister of Clovis. That marriage is always passed in a casual
sentence, as if a merely political one, and while page after page is spent
in following the alternations of furious crime and fatal chance, in the
contests between Fredegonde and Brunehaut, no historian ever
considers whether the great Ostrogoth who wore in the battle of Verona
the dress which his mother had woven for him, was likely to have

chosen a wife without love!--or how far the perfectness, justice, and
temperate wisdom of every ordinance of his reign was owing to the
sympathy and counsel of his Frankish queen.
You have to recollect, then, thus far, only three cardinal dates:--
449. Saxon invasion. 481. Clovis reigns and St. Benedict is born. 493.
Theodoric conquers at Verona.
Then, roughly, a hundred years later, in 590, Ethelbert, the fifth from
Hengist, and Bertha, the third from Clotilde, are king and queen of
Kent. I cannot find the date of their marriage, but the date, 590, which
you must recollect for cardinal, is that of Gregory's accession to the
pontificate, and I believe Bertha was then in middle life, having
persevered in her religion firmly, but inoffensively, and made herself
beloved by her husband and people. She, in England, Theodolinda in
Lombardy, and St. Gregory in Rome:--in their hands, virtually lay the
destiny of Europe.
Then the period from Bertha to Osburga, 590 to 849--say 250 years--is
passed by the Saxon people in the daily more reverent learning of the
Christian faith, and daily more peaceful and skilful practice of the
humane arts and duties which it invented and inculcated.
The statement given by Sir Edward Creasy of the result of these 250
years of lesson is, with one correction, the most simple and just that I
can find.
"A few years before the close of the sixth century, the country was little
more than a wide battle-field, where gallant but rude warriors fought
with each other, or against the neighbouring Welsh or Scots; unheeding
and unheeded by the rest of Europe, or, if they attracted casual attention,
regarded with dread and disgust as the fiercest of barbarians and the
most untameable of pagans. In the eighth century, England was looked
up to with admiration and gratitude, as superior to all the other
countries of Western Europe in piety and learning, and as the land
whence the most zealous and successful saints and teachers came forth
to convert and enlighten the still barbarous regions of the continent."
This statement is broadly true; yet the correction it needs is a very
important one. England,--under her first Alfred of Northumberland, and
under Ina of Wessex, is indeed during these centuries the most learned,
thoughtful, and progressive of European states. But she is not a
missionary power. The missionaries are always to her, not from

her:--for the very reason that she is learning so eagerly, she does not
take to preaching. Ina founds his Saxon school at Rome not to teach
Rome, nor convert the Pope, but to drink at the source of knowledge,
and to receive laws from direct and unquestioned authority. The
missionary power was wholly Scotch and Irish, and that power was
wholly one of zeal and faith, not of learning. I will ask you, in the
course of my next lecture, to regard it attentively; to-day, I must rapidly
draw to the conclusions I would leave with you.
It is more and more wonderful to me as I think of it, that no effect
whatever was produced on the Saxon, nor on any other healthy race of
the North, either by the luxury of Rome, or by her art, whether
constructive or imitative. The Saxon builds no aqueducts--designs no
roads, rounds no theatres in imitation of her,--envies none of her vile
pleasures,--admires, so far as I can judge, none of her far-carried
realistic art. I suppose that it needs intelligence of a more advanced
kind to see the qualities of complete sculpture: and that we may think
of the Northern intellect as still like that of a child, who cares to picture
its own thoughts in its own way, but does not care for the thoughts of
older people,