The mind of the philosopher, the historian, and the poet, must alike reflect with pain, that there was one gigantic genius who might lay claim to the laurels of all, and could yet allow his opinions to be so biassed by prejudice as to declare the records of the times to which we have been alluding to be worthless as a history of the contests of kites and crows![19] The intellect that controlled the infancy of a mighty nation was spurned, because it did not chance to be in existence when that nation had advanced to maturity--but it surely needs no new observation to pronounce that the germs of originality will develop themselves at all times and under all circumstances. Events may doubtless occur to evolve them with a peculiar force, and education and early habit may deck them with characteristic colouring; but where the spirit of originality--the essence of causation--exists, it _will_ find a vent for its exhibition, whether it rise in the breast of an Offa amid an age of comparative barbarism, or burst from the mind of a Napoléon, to stalk with the grandeur of a son of Anak superior to a host of petty minds, narrowed by the extreme polish of that very civilization upon which they chiefly pride themselves. [Footnote 19: Milton.] Had not the genius of Offa led the way by subjecting so large a portion of England to his control, it is scarcely probable that Egbert would have succeeded so early as within a few years from his decease in uniting the divided kingdoms under his government. Nor should it be forgotten that the future monarch of all England took his early lessons in the rude chivalry of the times at the court of Offa, by whom he was protected from the persecution of Brithric:[20] thence passing in safety by the connivance of his friend to the dominions of Charlemagne, he was entertained by that illustrious emperor till the death of Brithric left the kingdom of Wessex open to his claims. And on his return to his native land, he showed plainly that the ambitious designs of his early protector yet lived in his bosom, and but a transient period intervened ere the divided House of the Octarchy owned him as their common Lord. [Footnote 20: V. Holinshed, b. 6.] To Offa then, as the preserver, and to a certain extent the instructor, of the first sole monarch of England, the present age must look back with gratitude as the founder of the limited monarchy of the land; but as he is said by one of his historians[21] to have been a man in whom virtue and vice were so mingled, as to render it difficult to say whether of the twain were predominant--so in the legacy of spiritual slavery which he bequeathed to his kingdom, it is a question whether the advantages arising from unity in political government were not more than counterbalanced.