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Northern and Western Europe. Those who crossed to Britain were closely connected with the Belga, whom Cæsar found in the lower Netherlands. The early settlers were probably pressed north by new-comers, and so passed into Wales and Scotland, and thence across the narrow sea to Ireland.*

First attacked by Cæsar and his legions, the Britons were a century later conquered by the Romans, and the whole lower portion of the island was held by the conquerors for about three centuries and a half. Macaulay, in his history, states that Britain "received only a faint tincture of Roman arts and letters," but the results of investigations carried on since his time tell a very different story. The island was studded with peopled cities, and the open country dotted over with the luxurious mansions of the great land-owners, built of stone, and heated with furnaces. The ruins of some of these mansions have been discovered, which show what progress had been made in art. "Every colonnade and passage had its tessellated pavement; marble statues stood

* "The Pedigree of the English People,” Thomas Nicholas (second edition, 1868), p. 48.

"The Roman civilization had been completely introduced, military roads had been constructed from one end of the country to the other, and vast works of public utility and ornament had been completed. The bridges, gardens, baths, and villas of Rome had been reproduced in Britain, and all the pomp and luxury of the imperial court made familiar to our forefathers."-Nicholas, “Pedigree of the English People," p. 104. Says Palgrave: "The country was replete with the monuments of Roman magnificence; Malmesbury appeals to those stately ruins which still remained in his time, the twelfth century, as testimonies of the favor which Britain had enjoyed; the towns, the temples, the theatres, and the baths. . . excited the wonder and the admiration of the chronicler and the traveller."-Palgrave, i. 323.

out from their gayly painted walls; while pictures of Orpheus and Pan gleamed from amid the fanciful scrollwork and fretwork of its mosaic floors." * Commerce, too, had arisen. The harvests became so abundant that Britain at times supplied the necessities of Gaul. Potteries were established, which turned out work of great artistic beauty. Tin-mines were worked in Cornwall, lead-mines in Somerset and Northumberland, and ironmines in the Forest of Dean. In addition to all this, Rome became Christianized, and conferred upon Britain her religion, as well as her arts, her military system, and her laws. British churches arose over all the land to take the place of the pagan temples; or, as in other parts of Europe, the buildings erected to the divinities of ancient Rome were dedicated to the rites of the new national religion.

Such, in faint outline, was the condition of Britain. before the irruption of the barbarians whom we call Anglo-Saxons, and who transformed it into England. To the antiquarian, it must be a fascinating work to explore the old ruins, and unearth the unquestionable evidence of this former glory. But to the historian of England who seeks to trace the progress of her people, the growth of her institutions, and the development of the national character, all this story is unimportant, for every vestige of the former civilization was wiped out by the pagan conquerors. To the student of Continental

* Green's "Making of England," chap. iii. etc.

The Roman pottery found in the New Forest, where its manufacture was extensively carried on, surpasses, artistically, anything since produced in England. "The New Forest," p. 225 (London, 1880, John R. Wise).

‡ Green, Introduction and chap. v.

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history, and for our purposes, however, it is of great importance. Britain was a very distant province. There was nothing in its situation, resources, or inhabitants which would entitle it to the special favor of Rome. If, therefore, it profited for a time so largely from the Roman domination, one can conceive what must have been the effect of this same influence upon the provinces nearer home, where, as we have seen in a former chapter, the Roman civilization was not extinguished.*

Having climbed a mountain-top, we are now to descend into a valley as deep and dark as can be well imagined. In 411 the Roman legions are recalled from Britain, in consequence of the irruption of the Goths under Alaric. Returning temporarily, they finally abandon the country in 427, and the people are left to fight alone against their own enemies, the Picts and Scots. Powerless against such foes, they call to their aid the corsairs who had threatened their coast for generations. Hengist and Horsa, with their allies-Saxons, Angles, Jutes, and Frisians, all Low-Dutch tribes-repel the enemy from the North, but conquer the island for themselves, and give it the modern name of England. The process of conquest was a slow one, and this explains its character, for the Britons made a stout resistance, retreating only step by step. Thus, a century and a half were needed for the work, but it was done with Anglo

*Speaking of Italy, Freeman says: "No vulgar error is more utterly groundless than that which looks on the Goths and other Teutonic settlers as wilful destroyers of Roman buildings or of other works of Roman skill. Far from so doing, they admired, they preserved, and, so far as the decaying art of the time allowed, they imitated them.”—“ Origin of the English Nation," lecture of Jan. 5th, 1870, at Kingston-on-Hull, published in Macmillan's Magazine.

Saxon thoroughness. In the end, every vestige of the ancient civilization was extinguished; the towns were depopulated and laid waste; the mines were closed for ages; the villas reduced to ruins; Christianity was blotted out, and the whole country made a desolation. The island was again a barbaric pagan land.*

English historians naturally dwell on the bright aspect of this conquest-the introduction of liberal institutions, the free barbaric blood, and the general love of freedom which animated the new-comers. But we must remember that, in the growth of nations, we find at the bottom, as at the top, the idea of personal independence. When we compare the history of this people with that of the Netherlanders, who, although of the same blood, assimilated the civilization of ancient Rome, we can judge how much institutions can accomplish for society while it is passing through the intermediate stages.

What manner of people these new-comers were can be gathered from various sources. To the Romans, all the men who conquered Britain and founded England were known under the common name of Saxons, and the Roman provincials distinguished them from the other tribes who were attacking the empire by their thirst for blood and disregard for human suffering. While men noted in the Frank his want of faith, in the Alan his greed, in the Hun his shamelessness, what they noted in the Saxon was his savage cruelty. Dwelling upon the Continent, the main aim of their pirate raids was man-hunting, and it had with them a feature of peculiar horror. Before setting sail from the hostile country which they had attacked, their custom was to devote one man out of each

*See "Lectures of Freeman," cited above, and Green's "Making of England."

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ten of their captives to a death by slow and painful torture.* "Foes are they," sang a Roman poet of the time, "fierce beyond other foes, and cunning as they are fierce; the sea is their school of war, and the storm. their friend; they are sea-wolves that live on the pillage of the world."+ A century after their landing in England, the Britons knew them only as "barbarians," “wolves,” “dogs," "whelps from the kennels of barbarism," "hateful to God and man."+

Transplanted into England, they did not change their nature. Having passed over the land like a tempest of fire, burned the churches, murdered the priests at the altar, and blotted out all civilization, they settled down to enjoyment. Divided into a large number of petty tribal kingdoms, domestic wars became innumerable.§ For very many years their history is, as described by Milton, little more than the battles of kites and crows. In time there come intervals of peace. The smaller tribes are swallowed by the larger; little kingdoms appear; a rude form of law and order is established; and, finally, early in the ninth century, Aegberht, who had been brought up at the court of Charlemagne, subdues the whole island south of the Humber, and the kingdom of the Anglo-Saxons first takes its place among the states of Europe.¶

Meanwhile great social changes have affected the in

* Green's "History of the English People," vol. i. + Idem.

Idem, p. 48.

§ Gneist, "History of the English Constitution" (trans. London, 1886), i. 40.

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The aim of life, says Taine, was not to be slain, ransomed, mutilated, pillaged, hung, and, of course, if it were a woman, violated." -"English Literature."

Gneist, i. 42.