"His influence is explained by the rare qualities, which more than redeemed all his faults. His was, before all else, a great soul, manly and resolute, ardent and enthusiastic, full of unconquerable energy, able to wait or to act, but incapable of discouragement or fear, born to live upon those heights which attract at once the thunderbolt and the eyes of the crowd. His eloquence, superior to anything yet known in England, his keen and penetrating intelligence, his eager zeal for literary studies and public education, his knowledge and love of those wonders of architecture which dazzled the Christian nation, and to which his voice attracted such crowds, his constancy in trial, his ardent love of justice--all contributed to make of him one of those personages who sway and move the spirits of their contemporaries, and who master the attention and imagination even of those whom they cannot convince. Something generous, ardent, and magnanimous in his nature commended him always to the sympathy of lofty hearts; and when adverse fortune and triumphant violence and ingratitude came in, to put upon his life the seal of adversity, nobly and piously borne, the rising tide of emotion and sympathy carried all before it, sweeping away all traces of those errors of conduct which might have seemed to us less attractive or comprehensible." [Footnote 12] [Footnote 12: Ibidem, pp. 371-2.] The fifth and last volume ends with an elaborate essay of great interest on the Anglo-Saxon nunneries. It is certain that women have taken an active part in the civilization of modern nations, more particularly among the German tribes, whose purity of morals astonished the old Romans of the empire. The Germanic races considered woman as a person, not as a thing. No sooner was the light of the gospel received among them than their women began to distinguish themselves by the ardor of their faith and the generosity of their devotion. If monasteries cover the land, convents of women rival them in number, regularity, and religious fervor. It was the kings and nobles of the Heptarchy who first set the example of a cloistered life for men; it was also the queens and princesses who founded the first convents and became their earliest abbesses. Nothing is more interesting in the whole book, and nowhere is the author more successful, than in his portrayal of those primitive natures, still tinctured with barbarism, passing through a complete transformation under the law of light and charity; to see those nuns devote themselves to as earnest a study of Greek and Latin as to that of the Holy Scriptures; quote Virgil, compose verses during the intervals of their religious duties and the singing of the office. {10} Another remarkable trait is their profound and obstinate attachment to one or other of the parties who disputed the possession of supreme power in those troubled times--an attachment which is explained by the high rank of the abbesses