dealer who they were. "They are English, or Angles." "No, not
Angles," said the pious and poetic deacon; "they are angels,
with faces so angelic. From what country did they come?" "From
Deira." "_De Ira!_ ay, plucked from God's wrath. What is the
name of their king?" "Ella." "Ay, let alleluia be sung in their
land." It need scarcely be added that when this pious and witty
deacon became pope he remembered these Saxon slaves, and sent
Augustin (or Austin,--not to be confounded with Augustine of
Hippo, who lived nearly two centuries earlier), with forty monks
as missionaries to convert the pagan Saxons. They established
themselves in Kent A.D. 597, which became the seat of the first
English bishopric, through the favor of the king, Aethelbert,
whose wife Clotilda, a French princess, had been previously
converted. Soon after, Essex followed the example of Kent; and
then Northumbria. Wessex was the last of the Saxon kingdoms to
be converted, their inhabitants being especially fierce and
warlike. It is singular