The monasteries thus became real manufacturing, agricultural, and literary centres on a small scale.  The monks boiled down the salt of the brine-pits; they copied and illuminated manuscripts in the library; they painted pictures not without rude merit of their own; they ran rhines through the marshy moorland; they tilled the soil with vigour and success.  A new culture began to occupy the land—­the culture whose fully-developed form we now see around us.  But it must never be forgotten that in its origin it is wholly Roman, and not at all Anglo-Saxon.  Our people showed themselves singularly apt at embracing it, like the modern Polynesians, and unlike the American Indians; but they did not invent it for themselves.  Our existing culture is not home-bred at all; it is simply the inherited and widened culture of Greece and Italy.

The most perfect picture of the monastic life and of early English Christianity which we possess is that drawn for us in the life and works of Baeda.  Before giving any account, however, of the sketch which he has left us, it will be necessary to follow briefly the course of events in the English church during the few intervening years.

The Church of England in its existing form owes its organisation to a Greek monk.  In 667, Oswiu of Northumbria and Ecgberht of Kent, in order to bring their dominions into closer connection with Rome, united in sending Wigheard the priest to the pope, that he might be hallowed Archbishop of Canterbury.  No Englishman had yet held that office, and the choice may be regarded as a symptom of growth in the native Church.  But Wigheard died at Rome, and the pope seized the opportunity to consecrate an archbishop in the Roman interest.  His choice fell upon one Theodore, a monk of Tarsus in Cilicia, who was in the orders of the Eastern church.  The pope was particular, however, that Theodore should not “introduce anything contrary to the verity of the faith into the Church over which he was to preside.”  Theodore accepted Roman orders and the Roman tonsure, and set out for his province, where he arrived after various adventures on the way.  His re-organisation of the young Church was thorough and systematic.  Originally England had been divided into seven great dioceses, corresponding to the principal kingdoms (save only still heathen Sussex), and having their sees in their chief towns—­East and West Kent, at Canterbury and Rochester; Essex, at London; Wessex, at Dorchester or Winchester; Northumbria, at York; East Anglia, at Dunwich; and Mercia, at Lichfield.  The Scottish bishopric of Lindisfarne coincided with Bernicia.  Theodore divided these great dioceses into smaller ones; East Anglia had two, for its north and south folk, at Elmham and Dunwich; Bernicia was divided between Lindisfarne and Hexham; Lincolnshire had its see placed at Sidnacester; and the sub-kingdoms of Mercia were also made into dioceses, the Huiccii having their bishop-stool at Worcester; the Hecans,