We reach, at length, the year 596, when “Pope Gregory sent Augustin to Britain, with a great many monks, who preached the word of God to the nation of the Angles.”  Bede very judiciously omits all such details.  He tells us that “they carried on the conflagration from the eastern to the western sea, without any opposition, and almost covered all the superfices of the perishing island.  Public as well as private structures were overturned; the priests were everywhere slain before the altars; the prelates and the people, without any respect of persons, were destroyed with fire and sword.”  There is little to add to these impressive words, which no doubt contain the general truth.  But if we open the British history of Geoffrey of Monmouth, we find ourselves relieved from the thick darkness of the Anglo-Saxon records, by the blue lights and red lights of the most wondrous romance.  Rowena comes with her golden wine-cup.  Merlin instructs Vortigern how to discover the two sleeping dragons who hindered the foundation of his tower.  Aurelius, the Christian King, burns Vortigern in his Cambrian city of refuge.  Eldol fights a duel with Hengist, cuts off his head, and destroys the Saxons without mercy.  Merlin the magician, and Uther Pendragon, with fifteen thousand men, bring over “the Giant’s Dance” from Ireland, and set it up in Salisbury Plain.  Uther Pendragon is made the Christian king over all Britain.

At length we arrive at Arthur, the son of Uther.  To him the entire monarchy of Britain belonged by hereditary right.  Hoel sends him fifteen thousand men from Armorica, and he makes the Saxons his tributaries; and with his own hand kills four hundred and seventy in one battle.  He not only conquers the Saxons, but subdues Gaul, among other countries, and holds his court in Paris.  His coronation at the City of the Legions (Caer-Leon) is gorgeous beyond all recorded magnificence; and the general state of the country, in these days of Arthur, before the middle of the sixth century, is thus described:  “At that time, Britain had arrived at such a pitch of grandeur that in abundance of riches, luxury of ornaments, and politeness of inhabitants, it far surpassed all other kingdoms.”  Mordred, the wicked traitor, at length disturbs all this tranquillity and grandeur, and brings over barbarous people from different countries.  Arthur falls in battle.  The Saxons prevail, and the Britons retire into Cornwall and Wales.

Amid the bewildering mass of the obscure and the fabulous which our history presents of the first century and a half of the Saxon colonization, there are some well-established facts which are borne out by subsequent investigations.  Such is Bede’s account of the country of the invaders, and the parts in which they settled.  This account, compared with other authorities, gives us the following results.  They consisted of “the three most powerful nations of Germany—­Saxons, Angles, and Jutes.”  The Saxons came from the parts which, in Bede’s time, were called the country of the Old Saxons.  That country is now known as the duchy of Holstein.  These, under Ella, founded the kingdom of the South Saxons—­our present Sussex.  Later in the fifth century, the same people, under Cerdic, established themselves in the district extending from Sussex to Devonshire and Cornwall, which was the kingdom of the West Saxons.