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.