world’s greatest literature, to evolve the best government for developing human capabilities, and to make the whole world feel the effect of his ideals and force of character.  At the close of the nineteenth century, a French philosopher wrote a book entitled Anglo-Saxon Superiority, In What Does it Consist? His answer was, “In self-reliance and in the happiness found in surmounting the material and moral difficulties of life.”  A study of the literature in which the ideals of the race are most artistically and effectively embodied will lead to much the same conclusion.

The History of Anglo-Saxon England.—­The first task of the Anglo-Saxons after settling in England was to subdue the British, the race that has given King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table to English literature.  By 600 A.D., after a century and a half of struggle, the Anglo-Saxons had probably occupied about half of England.

They did not build on the civilization that Rome had left when she withdrew in 410, but destroyed the towns and lived in the country.  The typical Englishman still loves to dwell in a country home.  The work of Anglo-Saxon England consisted chiefly in tilling the soil and in fighting.

The year 597 marks an especially important date, the coming of St. Augustine, who brought the Christian faith to the Anglo-Saxons.  Education, literature, and art followed finding their home in the monasteries.

For nearly 400 years after coming to England, the different tribes were not united under one ruler.  Not until 830 did Egbert, king of the West Saxons, become overlord of England.  Before and after this time, the Danes repeatedly plundered the land.  They finally settled in the eastern part above the Thames.  Alfred (849-900), the greatest of Anglo-Saxon rulers, temporarily checked them, but in the latter part of the tenth century they were more troublesome, and in 1017 they made Canute, the Dane, king of England.  Fortunately the Danes were of the same race, and they easily amalgamated with the Saxons.

These invasions wasted the energies of England during more than two centuries, but this long period of struggle brought little change to the institutions or manner of life in Anglo-Saxon England.  The witan, or assembly of wise men, the forerunner of the present English parliament, met in 1066 and chose Harold, the last Anglo-Saxon king.

During these six hundred rears, the Anglo-Saxons conquered the British, accepted Christianity, fought the Danes, finally amalgamating with them, brought to England a lasting representative type of government, established the fundamental customs of the race, surpassed all contemporary western European peoples in the production of literature, and were ready to receive fresh impetus from the Normans in 1066.