And the reader who has leisure may follow him into the maze of those Dialogues in which Peter the Deacon serves as questioner, and the Pope discourses gently, to improve his ignorance, of all the wonderful things which the saints have done, chiefly in Italy, turning every law of nature upside down: or follow him through the minute and endless rules of his book of discipline, and note the fine-drawn scruples with which he has to deal, the strange cases of conscience for which he provides, the punctilio of extravagant penitence, so strangely contrasted with the other rough and ready modes of dealing with the unconverted, to which he gives the sanction of his recommendation. He was a man of his time, not of ours: he flattered Phocas while his hands were still wet with his predecessor's blood--though we may still hope that at such a distance Gregory did not know all that had happened or what a ruffian it was whom he thus addressed. He wrote affectionately and with devotion to Queen Brunhild without inquiring into that lady's character, which no doubt he knew perfectly. Where the good of Rome, either the city or the Church, was concerned, he stopped at nothing. I have no desire to represent him as faultless. But the men who are faultless, if any are to be found, leave but a limited record, and there is little more to say of perfection than that it is perfect. Gregory was not so. He got very angry sometimes, with bishops in Sicily, with stupid intendants, above all with that Eastern John--and sometimes, which is worse, he was submissive and compliant when he ought to have been angry and denounced a criminal. But on the other hand he was the first of the great ecclesiastical princes who have made Modern Rome illustrious--he was able, greatest of miracles, to put a heart into the miserable city which had allowed herself to be overrun by every savage: and stood between her and all creation, giving the whole world assurance of a man, and fighting for her with every weapon that came to his hand. Doing whatsoever he found to do thoroughly well, he laid the foundations of that great power which still extends over the whole world. I do not believe that he acted on any plan or had the supremacy of the Pontificate in his mind, or had conceived any idea of an ecclesiastical empire which should grasp the universe. To say, for instance, that the mission to England which he had cherished so long was undertaken with the idea of extending the sway of the Papacy seems one of those follies of the theorist which requires no answer. St. Paul might as well be accused of intending to spread a spiritual empire when he saw in his dream that man of Macedonia, and immediately directed his steps thither, obeying the vision. What Gregory hoped and prayed for was to bring in a new nation, as he judged a noble and vigorous race, to Christianity. And he succeeded in doing so: with such secondary consequences as the developments of time, and the laws of progress, and the course of