Savannah morning news. [volume] (Savannah) 1868-1887, 1881-12-03
ST. MARTINS ON-THE-HILL.
a Glimpse of the Oldest EngIIsh
Church.

A writer in the December Atantie
says:
Emerging from the old monastery
grounds, we find ourselves presently at
the lych-gate of the Oldest Christian
church in Great Britain, st. Martin's-on
the-hill. The King whom st. Augustine
found in Kent was pagan when he
came. but the Queen was Christian.
Bertha was a French Princess, one OF
that long succession of royal brides and
exiles from a brighter birthplace, for
whose inevitable inconsistencies in this
insular atmosphere and under these
frowning skies we feel an undying SYM
pathy. We do not know much about
Queen Bertha, but the fact that her
Kentish lord-a monarch of mark and
might in his day-was won over to her
faith after their marriage inclines us to
invest her image with something of pow
er as well as of charm. She was accom-
panied by a chaplain and confessor,
whose name every ancient writer spells
as him listeth, and no two alike; but all
agree that he was a man Of exceptional
holiness. and that he concentrated for her
use, to st. Martin of Tours, the bowed,
shapeless, ivy.smothered chapel on the
slope before us, and afterwards baptized
King Ethelbert within its walls. The
archeologists, after long and dubious
discussion of the case of this venerable
little church, and much Of denying and
disproving, inform us, at last accounts,
that we may say with species of truth,
within its walls. The greater part of the
building must have been reconstructed,
partly out of Roman materials, in q
much later reign than Ethelbert's; but a
fraction of the original edifce remains.
Two things within the shadowy interior
strike even the lightly-learned observer
as pointing to such a conclusion: the
font, which unwaverlng tradition de-
clares to have been that of King Ethel
bert's baptism, is decorated around its
lower section with Runic rings, and the
pavement of a portion of the chancel is
of inch-square Roman tesseT@.
The view from the porch of St. Mar
tins is one of rare loneliness. Framed
in the rustling foliage of the trees which
overshadow the churchyard, we see be
low US the fair cathedral spires, towering
over the red-tiled room of the town, and
the soft and cultured hills beyond them,
which enfOld the valley of the Stour
We all know that some landscapes pos
sess, independently of the grace of their
contours, an indescribable amenity of
look. tender and appealing physiogno-
my, and this is such an one. 1t seems
to hold suspended for US the emotions of
countless others of our kind who have
surveyed 1t from this spot. We cannot
choose but fancy the smile which it wore
to Queen Bertha when she looked upon
it, after the devoutly desired consumma-
ton of her husbands baptism; that
King Ethelbert may have paused upon
the threshold here. seeing in the scene,
as In a mirror, the reflection of his alter
ed life, that its wistful beauty may have
wrung from the appeased and subjugated
spirit of the saint himself one of those
poignant cries of his, which even the
secular world cannot forget, for they
tremble with the passion of his stormiest
years: Too late 1 loved thee, o thou
Beauty of Ancient Days, old and yet
ever new--too late loved theeP"