From the year of the Saxon invasion 449, there are exactly 400 years to the birth of Alfred, 849. You have no difficulty in remembering those cardinal years. Then, you have Four great men and great events to remember, at the close of the fifth century. Clovis, and the founding of Frank Kingdom; Theodoric and the founding of the Gothic Kingdom; Justinian and the founding of Civil law; St. Benedict and the founding of Religious law. Of, Justinian, and his work, I am not able myself to form any opinion--and it is, I think, unnecessary for students of history to form any, until they are able to estimate clearly the benefits, and mischief, of the civil law of Europe in its present state. But to Clovis, Theodoric, and St. Benedict, without any question, we owe more than any English historian has yet ascribed,--and they are easily held in mind together, for Clovis ascended the Frank throne in the year of St. Benedict's birth, 481. Theodoric fought the battle of Verona, and founded the Ostrogothic Kingdom in Italy twelve years later, in 493, and thereupon married the sister of Clovis. That marriage is always passed in a casual sentence, as if a merely political one, and while page after page is spent in following the alternations of furious crime and fatal chance, in the contests between Fredegonde and Brunehaut, no historian ever considers whether the great Ostrogoth who wore in the battle of Verona the dress which his mother had woven for him, was likely to have chosen a wife without love!--or how far the perfectness, justice, and temperate wisdom of every ordinance of his reign was owing to the sympathy and counsel of his Frankish queen. You have to recollect, then, thus far, only three cardinal dates:-- 449. Saxon invasion. 481. Clovis reigns and St. Benedict is born. 493. Theodoric conquers at Verona. Then, roughly, a hundred years later, in 590, Ethelbert, the fifth from Hengist, and Bertha, the third from Clotilde, are king and queen of Kent. I cannot find the date of their marriage, but the date, 590, which you must recollect for cardinal, is that of Gregory's accession to the pontificate, and I believe Bertha was then in middle life, having persevered in her religion firmly, but inoffensively, and made herself beloved by her husband and people. She, in England, Theodolinda in Lombardy, and St. Gregory in Rome:--in their hands, virtually lay the destiny of Europe. Then the period from Bertha to Osburga, 590 to 849--say 250 years--is passed by the Saxon people in the daily more reverent learning of the Christian faith, and daily more peaceful and skilful practice of the humane arts and duties which it invented and inculcated. The statement given by Sir Edward Creasy of the result of these 250 years of lesson is, with one correction, the most simple and just that I can find.