As might have been expected from such an historian, the Dean of Chichester, in tracing the Church of England back to the Italian mission and the see founded by Ethelbert at Canterbury, is not forgetful of the previous existence of the British Church, or of the earlier missionary enterprise of the Celtic Church among the pagans of the north of Britain. By whom the Church of Christ was first planted in these islands, by what missionaries the Celts, or pre-historic inhabitants, were originally converted, must probably remain for ever unknown. There is the authority of Tertullian for the simple statement that in the second century regions of Britain inaccessible to the Romans were subdued to Christ; and other authorities assert that this conquest was effected by Eastern missionaries either by direct ministrations or through the Church of Gaul. To the abundant zeal of Irish missionaries some years before the landing of Augustine, and no less than thirteen hundred years ago, the northern provinces of Britain, which became known as Scotland, were indebted for their conversion; and very remarkable it is to see that at a period little antecedent to that in which Gregory the Great signalised at Rome his zeal in the cause of missions, Columba, without any communication from Rome, came from Ireland (crossing in a boat covered with the hides of oxen), and in the remote island of the Hebrides, which became famous as Icolmkill (Columba's Island of the Cells), surrounded himself with men of religious zeal and learning, who went forth to preach the Gospel to the rude natives of Caledonia. By the term "the Celtic Church," Dr. Hook aptly enough distinguishes from the Italian mission established at Canterbury, that branch of the Church of Christ which comprised the Irish or Scots, the Caledonians, the British, and the Welsh. The author rightly deduces from the history of the Celtic Church that it was eminently a missionary church, and his theory seems to be that the Italian mission became necessary from the unwillingness of the Saxons to be taught by the despised and persecuted Britons. Be this as it may, the British Christians seem to have regarded as hopeless the conversion of the pagan Saxons, their oppressors, the slaves of idolatrous superstitions and a terrific mythology. But the northern half of Britain owed its conversion to missionaries of the Celtic Church, and they, in the following century, passed through the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms now comprised in the counties of Northumberland, Durham, and York. As far as regards the Mercian kingdom, it appears that the British Christians had fled to Wales and to Armorica before the coming of Augustine. His success in conversion was confined to Kent and Essex, but all the branches of the Church that were planted in England by the Celtic missionaries became ultimately absorbed in the Anglo-Saxon patriarchate of Canterbury, just as the Celtic and Teutonic races have blended in the English people.

But among even the most hostile of the semi-barbarous tribes in the north and west of Europe Rome, was looked to as the representative of civilisation and excellence. Of Roman forms of government and Roman art some traces survived amongst themselves. Various works that surrounded the Saxons in England reminded them of Roman grandeur. When Christianity began its civilising work among the Anglo-Saxons, England was a thinly populated country, abounding in forests and fens, the resort of the bandit and the abode of the wolf; but towns, light

houses, roads, and bridges of Roman workmanship remained to tell of the civilisers from Italy who had once held sway in Britain.

There was, however, a special preparation-a preparation which surely we may recognise as providential-for the reception of the Gospel in the kingdom of Kent, inasmuch as Ethelbert the king was not only a noblehearted, liberal-minded, and intelligent man, but was married to a Christian princess-Bertha, daughter of Charibert, King of Paris-for whose enjoyment of the free exercise of her religion due stipulation had been made; and (as the learned historian of the archbishops remarks) "the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit" with which Bertha was adorned, must have predisposed the royal household to think favourably of her religion. Such was the preparation of the land when the sower came to sow his seed; and it has been truly said that we may well be thankful not only that an Augustine came to convert, but that an Ethelbert reigned.

In describing the circumstances which led to the mission of Augustine, well as they are known, Dr. Hook gives a new interest to them by the manner of the narration, and brings before the mind's eye every scene from the time when Gregory's missionary zeal was excited for the countrymen of the three Yorkshire lads whom he beheld in the slavemarket of Rome, to the interview of Augustine at the head of his little band of monks and clergymen, with Ethelbert the royal "son of the ash-tree," seated amidst his soldiers and wise men under an ancient oak in the Isle of Thanet. When, after Ethelbert's friendly reception of the missionaries, permission was given them to approach Canterbury, the Saxons gazed with admiration on the dark-haired and swarthy but tall and dignified Augustine, who, preceded by his silver cross and the picture of Our Saviour wearing the crown of thorns, headed the procession; and the melodious tones of a music they had never heard, as the advancing choir was led by the sweet voice of the youthful Honorius, spoke to their hearts before their minds were enlightened by the truth. The missionaries soon acquired a fixed locality in Canterbury, but the spot on which, probably, Augustine first celebrated Christian rites was the venerable church of St. Martin. Bertha's chaplain (Liudhard, who had been a French bishop) had received an old Roman or British church for her service, which he consecrated afresh and named after that celebrated French saint-the most famous of all the great Christian saints of whom the descendant of Clovis had heard. Ingoberga-said to be her mother -bequeathed legacies to St. Martin's church of Tours, and this is another reason for supposing that the dedication to St. Martin of the little edifice near Canterbury was a recollection by Bertha of her native land. Bede mentions this church as "formerly built while the Romans were still in the island;" and the walls of the building that now stands are full of Roman bricks-relics, doubtless, of the church in which Bertha knelt. The chancel is built almost entirely of Roman bricks, but in the rest of the building these are mixed with later materials, and its windows belong to various periods of Gothic architecture. Tradition maintains that the edifice is as old as the second century, but its form and structure belong to a later date, though it is quite possible that parts of the fabric are coeval with the time of Bertha. At Canterbury, too, Ethelbert, after

his conversion, endowed the monastery to which Augustine's name was afterwards given, and which was designed as a missionary college, a purpose to which modern piety has, happily, once more consecrated its

site.

Gregory the Great intended to have two archbishoprics-one at London, which had been one of the three metropolitan sees of the British Church before the coming of the Saxons, and the other at York, once the altera Roma of Britain-and twenty-four bishoprics throughout England. Probably (as Professor Stanley has suggested) Gregory, to whom Britain was an unknown island, thought it might be about the size of Sicily or Sardinia, the only large islands he had ever seen. Great was the work which Augustine accomplished towards fulfilment of this purpose, although much short of the designs of the pontiff, and it seems all the greater when we reflect that it was accomplished within the short space of ten years. We shall not here follow Dr. Hook through the accurate account he gives of the difficulties that arose from the ritualistic peculiarities (attributable to the Eastern traditions, followed by the missionaries, who, coming, not from Rome, but from the Eastern Church, had originally christianised Gaul) which offended the Canterbury mission, or of the memorable conference at "Augustine's Oak," between the archbishop and his Italians on the one side, and the British bishops on the other, the object of which was to decide whether the two branches of the Holy Catholic Church then existing in the land should unite under one head, that head being the archbishop at Canterbury. Although the Celtic branches of the Church were afterwards brought under the Roman obedience, the attempts at conciliation in Augustine's lifetime were abortive, the Scots and Britons refusing to yield points which they conceived to affect their ecclesiastical independence. In narrating these and the other events of Augustine's life, the author gives us a connected narrative of actual facts, carefully sifted from the doubtful legends that have surrounded them.

The extension to Northumbria of the Kentish mission is a most interesting portion of this great chapter of English history. It was the principal event of the short episcopate of Justus, a Roman, the first Bishop of Rochester, which, notwithstanding its proximity to Canterbury, was made a separate see, it being the capital of one of the two kings of Kent (for in those days Kent was honoured with two kings), the other of whom reigned at Canterbury. It is very remarkable that in the remote kingdom of Northumbria, Edwin, the king-who then ruled from the northern shore of the Humber far into the lowlands of Scotland, and westward into Cumberland-had been, by his marriage with Ethelburga, brought into contact with Christianity, as Ethelbert was by his marriage to Bertha. Like him, Edwin had conceded that his wife should enjoy free exercise of her religion, and Paulinus was sent with her from Kent by Justus on her marriage to the Northumbrian prince, and in 625 was consecrated Archbishop of York. Very interesting is the picture we have of Paulinus* as he appeared in Edwin's council: the lofty stature, slightly bending, the dark eye flashing, the black hair curling round his bald head, the slender aquiline nose, the thin, spare features, the dignified and * His personal appearance was described by one of his converts to a friend of Ven. Bede.

venerable appearance of the civilised Italian contrasting with the longflowing flaxen locks, blue eyes, ruddy weatherbeaten faces, and robust forms of the Saxon king's rude warrior-counsellors. The Dean of Chichester gives due prominence to Bede's account of the proceedings at Edwin's Witanagemote in A.D. 627-so interesting as the earliest report of a parliamentary debate. Edwin's baptism preluded the conversion of his kingdom; and the heart of the aged Justus, at that time archbishop, was gladdened in his then humble cathedral at Canterbury by the triumphant success of his mission. But in 633, at the fatal field of Hatfield-chase, near Doncaster, the noble Edwin lost his kingdom and his life, and with him fell in the north of England the short-lived edifice of Christianity which Paulinus, the Roman missionary, had so wondrously raised.

In narrating how Northumbria once more became a Christian country, Dr. Hook again renders due justice to the Celtic mission, and to the character of Aidan, the new bishop, an illustrious representative of the educated, self-denying, and zealous heroes of Christianity who were sent forth by the Celtic Church, and who brought the sons of Odin into contact with the descendants of the Celtic Britons who had resisted Cæsar. In those days King Oswald reigned, and the light of the Gospel, cherished by that regal convert, shone from Bamburgh, the sea-coast fortress of Ida "the flame bearing "-far to the Cleveland Hills. When Oswald determined to attempt the restoration of Christianity, he resorted, not to the Archbishop of Canterbury, but to the Celtic Church; and Aidan having fixed his cathedral on sea-girt Lindisfarne, that remote island church became the pharos of Northumbria in the twilight between heathendom and Christianity, and mother of all the churches from Tyne to Tweed. To the missionaries of the Celtic Church, even the midland (or Mercian) kingdom and all the northern territory, from the Wall of Antoninus to the Humber, became indebted for Christianity. The missionaries in Kent seem to have made no attempt to convert even the adjoining kingdom of Sussex, which was in those days a territory almost impenetrable, and it did not receive the Gospel until Wilfrid, when deposed from his diocese of York, found employment for his active and zealous mind in its conversion, Sussex being at that time the only realm of the Heptarchy that still remained pagan. It was in the Whitby synod (at which Hilda, the celebrated abbess, and other ladies were present) that Wilfrid first displayed the powers of intellect and eloquence which early marked him for prominence and distinction. He was a young Northumbrian Saxon, who had been educated in the Celtic Church, but had visited Rome, and now became the champion for everything Roman:

"The scenes of beauty and of grandeur, of nature in its loveliness, and of the relics of art in its perfection, overpowered," says our author, "the enthusiastic mind of the youthful traveller; and from the palaces of Rome and the vineyards of Italy, he returned to the wooden hovels on the bleak hill-sides of Northumbria, proclaiming his altered principles by displaying his Italian tonsure, despising everything English, and becoming a vehement assertor to the crowds who surrounded him of the superiority of all that was Roman."

Ripon, then a monastery of the Scottish monks, having been conferred upon him,

CANTERBURY AND ITS ARCHBISHOPS.

"He immediately," continues Dr. Hook," "indulged his newly-acquired and expensive tastes by erecting a building, the marble and ornamental arches of which, while they faintly reminded the builder of his beloved Italy, filled the minds of native beholders with admiration."

In the Whitby synod, Wilfrid secured a victory for the cause of Roman obedience in the controversy on the subject of Easter-an important step in the concession of superiority to the church of Canterbury as the English representative, in fulness of apostolic power, of the Bishop of Rome, whose recognition in England as successor of the Prince of the Apostles (about seventy years after the coming of Augustine) led to the assumption of those despotic powers which the Pope was ere long to assume.

About ten years before the Whitby synod, Honorius, almost the last survivor of the companions of Augustine, died. He was the last Italian bishop of the Anglo-Saxon Church. At that time there was no archbishop either of London or York; the bishops at London and at Lindisfarne represented the Celtic mission, and claimed no rights over other sees.

It is a remarkable fact that to the distant civilisation of Mediterranean shores, in the persons of Hadrian and of Theodorus, the one an African, and the other a native of Tarsus, in Cilicia, England-at least, in the southern province-became indebted towards the close of the seventh century for the foundation of learning. Tarsus was still a Greek city in the time of Theodorus, who acquired his learning in the same schools in which, six hundred years before (as the Dean of Chichester remarks), St. Paul was a boy learning Greek. Here, from the sailors, the youthful Theodorus may have heard of the Saxon pirates who endangered the trade that had been carried on, from the earliest periods of history, between the shores of the Mediterranean and the Cassiterides :

"Little did he think that his old age would be passed in a remote island-chiefly known by its connexion with the Scilly Islands-which these Saxons had subdued, or that his active mind would find its repose by describing to his converts there the goat-hair tents which dotted those luxuriant plains, upon which, extending on one side to the sea, and terminating on the other with the Taurus, he had been accustomed to look down from the terraced roofs of his native city."

This remarkable man, who became Archbishop of Canterbury in 669, first introduced the study of the Greek language into England; and while we are indebted to Honorius, his predecessor, for our ecclesiastical music (in the chants still heard in our cathedrals), we owe to Theodorus the organ, that noble instrument, which was known in the eighth century only to the Greeks, and of which our Church appears to have been in possession before any other Church in the west of Europe. In the schools founded by Theodorus, and carried on by his successors, we find laid down the great principle-revived by William of Wykeham, and still characteristic of English schools and universities-not only to impart knowledge but to exercise the mind; not to burden the memory, but to invigorate the intellect. St. Augustine's and the other monasteries in England were lay institutions connected with the Church; and their resemblance to our colleges in the universities became the greater when, on the whole country having been converted and the Church established, Archbishop Theodorus made them seats of learning, and laid the foundation of English scholarship. The episcopate of Theodorus was disturbed