It must have been some unusual necessity which took him far down into the town on a certain day and through the noisy crowded slave market. But on seeing the children, with their blue eyes full of tears and their long golden hair shining in the sun, everything else was forgotten; he stopped abruptly to ask who they were. “Angles, from the isle of Britain,” was the answer, given indifferently enough. The keeper knew that the big, dark-faced monk was not a slave-buyer. “Angles! They are born to be angels!” cried Gregory, and straightway he flew to the Pope and besought permission to go with some of his monks to Britain, to preach the Gospel. The Pope, taken by surprise, consented; and before he had time to think over the matter, Gregory, with his volunteers, had put three days of travelling between himself and Rome. Then the news leaked out, and the people rose like one man and rushed to the Pope, who was on his way to St. Peter’s, and, arresting his progress, burst into indignant cries: “You have offended St. Peter! You have ruined Rome in allowing Gregory to leave us!” Pelagius saw his mistake and sent messengers in all haste to call Gregory back. Of course he obeyed; he never forgot England, but it was only in the sixth year of his own pontificate (596) that he could carry out his design, and then he could not himself take part in the expedition. He found a noble substitute in St. Augustine, and it must have been with a glad heart that he sent him forth, and gave him and his forty Benedictines the final blessing, as they knelt (so we are told) on the grassy stretch below the steps of Gregory’s own convent on the Cœlian Hill. The grass grows there still; still the green trees shadow the enclosure called St. Gregory’s park, through which one approaches the church, and still the flowers bloom in Silvia’s garden where he played as a little boy. Even modern Rome has been loath to encroach on the place so dear to him who loved Rome so much. I have often wondered what became of the little English children he saw, and seeing, loved. Surely he rescued them and placed them with kind people to be cared for. His quick notice of them reminds one of our own Pius IX, who could never pass an English child without stopping to bless it, and, while blessing the child, to pray for England, whom Augustine and his companions made “the Isle of Saints” and the “Dowry of Mary.”