But whatever may have been the influence of Columba on the Picts and Scots, neither he nor his successors could exercise any direct or efficacious action on the Anglo-Saxons, who became daily more redoubtable, and whose ferocious incursions menaced not only the Caledonian clans, but also the Britons. Other missionaries were therefore needed. Whence were they to come? From that ever-burning centre of faith and charity from which the light of Christianity had already been brought to the Irish by Patrick; to the Bretons and Scots by Palladius, Ninian, and Germain--from Rome! "Who then were the Anglo-Saxons, upon whom so many efforts were concentrated, and whose conquest is ranked, not without reason, among the most fruitful and most happy that the church has ever accomplished? Of all the Germanic tribes the most stubborn, intrepid, and independent, this people seem to have transplanted with themselves into the great island which owes to them its name, the genius of the Germanic race, in order that it might bear on this predestined soil its richest and most abundant fruits. The Saxons brought with them a language, a character, and institutions stamped with a strong and invincible originality. Language, character, institutions, have triumphed, in their essential features, over the vicissitudes of time and fortune--have outlived all ulterior conquests, as well as all foreign influences, and, plunging their vigorous roots into the primitive soil of Celtic Britain, still exist at the indestructible foundation of the social edifice of England. ... Keeping intact and untamable their old Germanic spirit, their old morals, their stern independence, they gave from that moment to the free and proud genius of their race a vigorous upward impulse which nothing has been able to bear down." [Footnote 8] [Footnote 8: Vol. iv. book xii. ch. 1.]