6. The obscure history of the South Saxon kingdom has been already touched upon in connexion with that of Mercia. Suffice it to remind the reader that under the protecting hand of the great Midland king, who evidently wished to make of this kingdom a counterpoise to the power of Wessex, it included not only the modern county of Sussex but also the Isle of Wight and a good deal of the east of Hampshire; and that though its royal family were Christian the bulk of the people remained idolators. This religious isolation of the South Saxon people is generally attributed to the fact already alluded to, that they were separated from the rest of England by the mighty forest of the Andredeswald, that “dark impenetrable wood” which yielded in later ages to the axes of the charcoal-burners of Sussex and Kent, so that the country which we call the Weald is now left comparatively bare and treeless. It is hard for us who now know the chief town of the coast of Sussex as virtually a suburb of London, to imagine the time when Sussex, isolated in its heathen barbarism, remained virtually another world to the inhabitants of Essex and Middlesex. 7. The history of the West Saxon kingdom, for which such a brilliant future was reserved in the coming generations, is for the seventh century obscure and uninteresting. Partly, of course, this may be accounted for by the fact that our one transcendent authority for this period, Bede, is himself a most patriotic Northumbrian, and cares little for distant Wessex. But even after making allowance for this weighting of one of the scales, it is impossible not to recognise the fact that in the West Saxon line during the greater part of the seventh century we meet with no such powerful personalities as Edwin, Oswald, and Oswy, nor do we find there any symptoms which would have warranted a beholder in looking for the eventual appearance of the splendid figures of Alfred, Edward, and Athelstan.