their idolatrous worship, and engage them to embrace the Christian religion. He hoped, by their conversion, to vanquish their obstinacy, imagining that the divine precepts of the Gospel would assuage their impetuous and restless passions, mitigate their ferocity, and induce them to submit more tamely to the government of the Franks. These projects were great in idea, but difficult in execution; accordingly, the first attempt to convert the Saxons, after having subdued them, was unsuccessful, because it was made without the aid of violence, or threats, by the bishops and monks, whom the victor had left among that conquered people, whose obstinate attachment to idolatry no arguments nor exhortations could overcome. [Mark the _naïveté_ of this confession.] More forcible means were afterwards used to draw them into the pale of the Church, in the wars which Charlemagne carried on in the years 775, 776, and 780, against that valiant people, whose love of liberty was excessive, and whose aversion to the restraints of sacerdotal authority was inexpressible. During these wars their attachment to the superstition of their ancestors was so warmly combated by the allurements of reward, by the terror of punishment, and by the imperious language of victory, that they suffered themselves to be baptised, though with inward reluctance, by the missionaries, which the emperor sent among them for that purpose" (p. 170). Rebellion broke out once more, headed by the two most powerful Saxon chiefs, but they were won over by Charlemagne, who persuaded them "to make a public and solemn profession of Christianity, in the year 785, and to promise an adherence to that divine religion for the rest of their days. To prevent, however, the Saxons from renouncing a religion which they had embraced with reluctance, several bishops were appointed to reside among them, schools also were erected, and monasteries founded, that the means of instruction might not be wanting. The same precautions were employed among the Huns in Pannonia, to maintain in the profession of Christianity that fierce people whom Charlemagne had converted to the faith, when, exhausted and dejected by various defeats, they were no longer able to make head against his victorious arms, and chose rather to be Christians than slaves" (p. 170). The grateful Church canonized Charlemagne, the brutal soldier who had so enlarged her borders; "not to enter into a particular detail of his vices, whose number counter-balanced that of his virtues, it is undeniably evident that his ardent and ill-conducted zeal for the conversion of the Huns, Frieslanders, and Saxons, was more animated by the suggestions of ambition, than by a principle of true piety; and that his main view in these religious exploits was to subdue the converted nations under his dominion, and to tame them to his yoke, which they supported with impatience, and shook off by frequent revolts. It is, moreover, well