we know little of these rites, except their veneration for the oak and mistletoe, and that human sacrifices formed one of the great features of their worship, which was celebrated in the recesses of their forests. Gigantic ruins in different parts of England are supposed to be the remains of Druidical temples, of which the most remarkable are those of Stonehenge on Salisbury Plain, and those at Abury in Wiltshire.

The equestrian order were the next in authority to the Druids. The bards also were closely connected with the Druids. They sang the genealogy of their princes, and accompanied their songs with an instrument called the chrotta.

The inhabitants of the south-eastern parts of Britain had become somewhat civilized before the time of Cæsar; while the other tribes led the wild and roaming life of shepherds and herdsmen. The Britons tattooed their bodies and stained them with woad. They wore checkered mantles like the Scotch highlanders, girdles round their waists, and metal chains on their breasts; the hair and mustachio were suffered to grow, and a ring was worn on the middle finger. Their arms were a small shield, javelins, and a pointless sword. They fought from chariots (esseda, covini) having scythes affixed to the axles. They had no regular fortresses, and their towns were mere clusters of huts in the midst of forests, surrounded by a ditch and a rampart of felled trees.

The Britons were divided into several tribes, the government of which was monarchical, but free. The chief tribes known to the Romans were the Cantii (in Kent), the Trinobantes (in Middlesex and Essex), with the capital Londinium (London), the Cenimagni or Iceni (in Norfolk, Suffolk, and Cambridgeshire), the Segontiaci (in Hants and Berks), and the Anculites and Bibroci (in Berks and Wilts).

For nearly a century Roman conquest ceased in Britain, but Roman civilization continued to spread, chiefly through intercourse with Gaul. To this period belongs the Prince Cunobelin, a successor of Caswallon, immortalized by Shakspeare under the name of Cymbeline. The mad emperor Caligula only talked of invading Britain, as his soldiers gathered shells on the opposite beach for trophies of his conquest of the ocean, A.D. 40; but his successor, Claudius, in A.D. 43, sent Aulus Plautius, with four legions, to conquer the island. The emperor himself followed, and the southeastern part, from Essex to Hampshire, became a Roman province. The other tribes, however, held out under their heroic leader Caradoc, or CARACTACUS, against whom the emperor sent Ostorius Scapula in A.D. 47. After a brave resistance all the tribes south of the Tyne were defeated, except those of Wales, whither Caractacus

had retreated. At length his stronghold, Caer Caradoc, was taken, together with his wife and family, and he himself was soon afterwards surrendered to the Romans by his step-mother, Cartismandua, queen of the Brigantes, with whom he had taken refuge. Carried as a prisoner to Rome, he asserted in chains before the throne of Claudius his free-born rights as boldly as he had defended them in arms; and he was treated with the respect due to his courage.

His valour was soon emulated by "the British warrior queen,” BOADICEA, princess of the Iceni, whose daughters had been outraged and herself scourged by the Roman tribunes. Suetonius Paulinus, whom Nero sent as governor in A.D. 59, attacked the island of Mona (Anglesey), which was at once the retreat of those who still resisted, and the chief seat of the worship of the Druids. He burned them in the fires which they had prepared for their captive enemies, and cut down their sacred groves. But his absence was used by the subject Britons as an opportunity for insurrection. Boadicea inflamed their fury by the recital of her cruel wrongs and the exhibition of her outraged daughters with her in her warchariot. London (Londinium), already one of the chief Roman colonies, was reduced to ashes, and 70,000 Romans and other strangers were massacred. But Suetonius avenged this cruelty in a great battle (A.D.,62), in which 80,000 Britons perished, and Boadicea only saved herself from captivity by poison. Suetonius was recalled by Nero; and, after the successive administrations of Cerealis (A.D. 71) and Julius Frontinus, Vespasian intrusted the government to JULIUS AGRICOLA, who completed the conquest of the island, and whose campaigns are recorded by his son-in-law, the great historian Tacitus. His government lasted seven years (78-85). In 81 he drew a line of fortresses across the island, between the Firths of Clyde and Forth. In 84 and 85 he advanced into Caledonia (Scotland), and in the latter year he defeated the Caledonians, under Galgacus, at the foot of the Grampians. His fleet also circumnavigated the island.

Thus was the country subdued by the Romans as far north as the feet of the Scottish highlands, in which the Caledonians kept their ground. The frontier on this side was not well defined till the reign of Hadrian, who visited the island in person, and fixed the limit of the empire with his characteristic moderation. He raised an earthen rampart across from the Solway Firth to the Tyne, the remains of which are known as the Picts' Wall. The frontier was extended under his successor Antoninus Pius, so as to embrace the southern part of what is now Scotland; and a new rampart was drawn by the governor, Lollius Urbicus, along the line of Agricola's forts, between the Firths of Forth and Clyde, A.D. 140, which was

called the WALL OF ANTONINUS, and is now known as Graham's Dyke.

This more advanced line, however, was not maintained. The great emperor Severus was oummoned in his old age to repel the Caledonians. Though so ill with the gout that he had to be borne in a litter, he penetrated to the extremity of the island, but with the loss of 50,000 mer. On his return to York (where he died in A.D. 211) he caused the WALL OF HADRIAN to be repaired; and that wall may be regarded henceforth as the true frontier of the empire.

Thus limited on the north, the Roman province of Britain was governed by a consular legate and a procurator down to A.D. 197, after which it was divided into two provinces, Britannia Superior and Inferior; and at a later period (under Diocletian or Constantine) into four; namely-(1) Britannia Prima, south of the Severn and Thames; (2) Britannia Secunda, containing Wales and the border counties, or all to the west of the Severn and the Dee; (3) Flavia Cæsariensis, the whole middle portion from the Humber to the Thames, except Wales; (4) Maxima Cæsariensis, embracing all to the north of the estuaries of the Mersey and the Humber. To these was added in A.D. 369 a fifth province, called (5) Valentia, north of the Wall of Severus; and the writers of the Middle Ages divide this into Valentia, between the Walls of Severus and Antoninus; and Vespasiana, north of the latter. The whole island was subject to the Vicarius Britanniæ, whose residence was at Eboracum (York). The next city in importance was Londinium or Augusta (London); and there were numerous other Roman cities, including several colonies. The chief ports connecting the island with the continent were Portus Dubris (Dover) and Kutupiæ (Richborough), the ruins of which are still to be seen near Sandwich.

On the death of Severus, his son Caracalla hastened back to Rome, after concluding a peace with the wild tribes on the northern frontier. But a new enemy soon appeared in an opposite quarter, namely, the Saxon pirates, whose descents on the eastern coast from the opposite shores of Germany, in the third century, caused the appointment of an officer for the protection of that coast, called Count of the Saxon shore (Comes littoris Saxonici). The first two of these officers, Carausius (A.D. 286) and Allectus (293), used their power to seize the purple; but Allectus was subdued by Constantius (296), and the island remained quiet till the end of the Roman sway over it. Constantius himself was the last emperor who resided in Britain. He died at York (306), where his son, Constantine the Great, assumed the title of Cæsar. Constantine is believed to have had a share of British blood, through his mother Helena.

Soon after this the province was again disturbed on the north by

the PICTS and Scors, savage tribes, who had now supplanted the earlier Caledonians and Meatæ in Scotland. The Scots had crossed over from Ireland, which was for centuries called Scotia. The Picts are thought to have been a remnant of the Caledonians. In 368, under Valentinian I., the Picts and Scots penetrated to London, but were repulsed by Theodosius, who recovered the district between the walls of Severus and Antoninus, and named it Valentia.

Under his son, the emperor Theodosius, a Briton named Maximus, who had fought gloriously against the Picts and Scots, set up a western empire at Trèves, but was defeated at Aquileia, and put to death A.D. 388. Under Maximus Britain was further weakened by the establishment of a colony of its warriors in Armorica (Brittany). The great general Stilicho gave the province temporary aid in 396, but the growing pressure of the Alani, Suevi, and Vandals on the empire at length compelled Honorius to withdraw his legions from Britain. They returned in 418, at the prayer of the Britons, on a new inroad of the Picts and Scots; but, after repulsing the enemy, repairing the fortresses, and trying to teach the use of arms to the enervated people, they took their final leave. The Britons now made one last effort in their own defence, and, under the Gaulish bishop, St. Germain of Auxerre, they gained the victory over the Picts and Scots which was called, from their battlecry, the HALLELUJAH VICTORY, A.D. 429. In 446 they made their last appeal to Rome, by a letter to the great patrician Aëtius, inscribed The Groans of the Britons. Aëtius was "not deaf to their cry of anguish," but, pressed by the terrible Attila, he had no help to give them. In their despair, and guided by the advice of Vortigern, a prince in the south of Britain, they invoked the aid of the Saxons to repel the Picts and Scots, a remedy more fatal than the disease.

The state in which the Romans had left Britain was one of great prosperity in agriculture and the arts of life. The province was traversed by four great roads, parts of which are still used; namely, Watling Street, the high-road from the continent to the north-west, beginning at Rutupiæ (Richborough) on the coast of Kent, passing through London, and ending at Caernarvon; Ikenild or Rikenild Street, from Tynemouth, through York, Derby, and Birmingham, to St. David's; Irmin or Hermin Street, from St. David's to Southampton; and the Foss, between Cornwall and Lincoln. Other great works of civilization, though vanished from the face of the country, are continually disinterred from beneath its soil. There were cities with great walls, temples, theatres, baths, and circuses, the remains of which are still seen at remote stations, such as Caerleon (Isca Silurum) in Wales, and in bare sites, such as Silchester, as well as

A.D. 446.

INTRODUCTION OF CHRISTIANITY.

7

at London, York, Chester, and other still flourishing cities and towns. Westminster Abbey stands on the site of a temple of Apollo, and the hill on which Wren built the basilica of St. Paul was occupied by the temple of the goddess whose servants resisted the apostle at Ephesus. The irruption of the Saxons was made on no wild country, but on a province adorned with all the arts of civilization. Still, this was chiefly external. The Roman occupation of Britain was military; the people retained their own language; the peasantry were not Romanized; and they were easily excited to revolt.

Christianity was introduced into Britain at an early period of the Roman rule, though probably not through Rome, but from the East. An old tradition makes Lucius or Lever Maur (the Great Light), in the second century, the first Christian prince. It is certain that Britain had martyrs under Diocletian (as St. Alban, at Verulam, which was called after him St. Alban's); it sent bishops, in 314, to the Council of Arles; had the Bible in the native tongue, and possessed learned ecclesiastics. Pelagius, the opponent of St. Augustine, was a Briton, whose real name is said to have been Morgan; and his disciple, Celestius, was an Irishman. The expulsion of the Pelagians by Severus bishop of Trèves, and by St. Germain of Auxerre, in 446, was one of the last acts of Roman power in the island.