This is the fabulous and heroic age of our nation.

After the natural and just representations of the Roman scene, the stage is again crowded with enchanters, giants, and all the extravagant images of the wildest and most remote antiquity.

No personage makes so conspicuous a figure in these stories as King Arthur: a prince whether of British or Roman origin, whether born on this island or in Amorica, is uncertain; but it appears that he opposed the Saxons with remarkable virtue and no small degree of success, which has rendered him and his exploits so large an argument of romance that both are almost disclaimed by history.

Light scarce begins to dawn until the introduction of Christianity, which, bringing with it the use of letters and the arts of civil life, affords at once a juster account of things and facts that are more worthy of relation: nor is there, indeed, any revolution so remarkable in the English story.
The bishops of Rome had for some time meditated the conversion of the Anglo-Saxons.

Pope Gregory, who is surnamed the Great, affected that pious design with an uncommon zeal; and he at length found a circumstance highly favorable to it in the marriage of a daughter of Charibert, a king of the Franks, to the reigning monarch of Kent.