“Let any one sit on the hill of the little church of St. Martin, and look on the view which is there spread before his eyes.  Immediately below are the towers of the great abbey of St. Augustine, where Christian learning and civilization first struck root in the Anglo-Saxon race; and within which now, after a lapse of many centuries, a new institution has arisen, intended to carry far and wide, to countries of which Gregory and Augustine never heard, the blessings which they gave to us.  Carry your view on—­and there rises high above all the magnificent pile of our cathedral, equal in splendour and state to any, the noblest temple or church that Augustine could have seen in ancient Rome, rising on the very ground which derives its consecration from him.  And still more than the grandeur of the outward buildings that rose from the little church of Augustine and the little palace of Ethelbert have been the institutions of all kinds of which these were the earliest cradle.  From Canterbury, the first English Christian city,—­from Kent, the first English Christian kingdom—­has by degrees arisen the whole constitution of Church and State in England which now binds together the whole British Empire.  And from the Christianity here established in England has flowed, by direct consequence, first the Christianity of Germany; then, after a long interval, of North America; and lastly, we may trust, in time, of all India and all Australasia.  The view from St. Martin’s Church is indeed one of the most inspiriting that can be found in the world; there is none to which I would more willingly take any one who doubted whether a small beginning could lead to a great and lasting good;—­none which carries us more vividly back into the past, or more hopefully forward into the future.”

To this Gregorian canticle in praise of the British constitution, I grieve, but am compelled, to take these following historical objections.  The first missionary to Germany was Ulphilas, and what she owes to these islands she owes to Iona, not to Thanet.  Our missionary offices to America as to Africa, consist I believe principally in the stealing of land, and the extermination of its proprietors by intoxication.  Our rule in India has introduced there, Paisley instead of Cashmere shawls:  in Australasia our Christian aid supplies, I suppose, the pious farmer with convict labour.  And although, when the Dean wrote the above passage, St. Augustine’s and the cathedral were—­I take it on trust from his description—­the principal objects in the prospect from St. Martin’s Hill, I believe even the cheerfullest of my audience would not now think the scene one of the most inspiriting in the world.  For recent progress has entirely accommodated the architecture of the scene to the convenience of the missionary workers above enumerated; to the peculiar necessities of the civilization they have achieved.  For the sake of which the cathedral, the monastery, the temple, and the tomb, of Bertha, contract themselves in distant or despised subservience under the colossal walls of the county gaol.