Augustine was by merest chance the missioner to England. Gregory the Great, the Pope who sent him on the mission, had himself, when Deacon, intended to convert the heathen in our island. Gregory was not of the sour religious type, but something of a humorist, and a punster and torturer of words after Burnand’s own fancy, only he did it better. The story is well known, how, seeing slaves from England sold in Rome, he asked from what country they came. “They are Angles,” replied the dealer. “Not Angles, but angels, with faces so angel-like,” said Gregory; “but from what country come they?” “From Deira,” was the answer. “Deira,” rejoined Gregory; “well said, indeed. _De ira_, plucked from God’s ire and called to Christ’s mercy. But what is the name of their King?” “Ælla,” the slave-dealer told him; and the Deacon was again equal to the occasion. “Alleluia,” he said, “shall be sung in Ælla’s land.” At once he sought permission of the Pope to travel to that country whence those engaging pagans had come, to reconvert their land; and, having obtained it, set forth with a small following. He had not been gone more than the third day’s journey when, as the company rested at noon, a locust sprang upon the book he was reading. He saw an omen in it. “Rightly is it called Locusta,” said Gregory, “because it seems to say to us ‘Loco sta’; that is, ‘stay in your place.’ I see we shall not be able to finish our journey. But,” he added, strangely disregarding the omen his fancy had created, “rise, load the mules, and let us get on as far as we can.” Before they had set out again came messengers who had ridden hastily from Rome to recall him: the people having missed their kindly Deacon. He returned, and never visited Britain. Years afterwards, when elected Pope, he was mindful of his old project, but was then compelled to send another on the mission that had lain so near his heart. That other was Augustine, and a most unwilling missioner he proved. He had not at any time wished to go, and departed from Rome with his forty companions only in obedience to his Sovereign Pontiff’s commands. Arrived midway in France, the expedition heard tales so dreadful of the distant land to which they were bound that they sent Augustine back, by no means unwilling, to beg of Gregory that the project might be abandoned. Bede, in his “Ecclesiastical History,” tells us “they were seized with craven terror, and began to think of returning home, rather than proceed to a barbarous, fierce, and unbelieving nation, to whose very language they were strangers.” But it was precisely because they were unbelieving that Augustine was sent to them. Gregory would not hear of the mission being abandoned; and so Augustine was obliged, after all, to fulfil it.