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VI.

political and military conduct; and has made Gal- CHAP. gacus or Gallawg, on the Grampian Hills, as interesting as Caractacus. 15 It is needless to detail battles that so much resemble each other; and always pain humanity both to read and to narrate. It is more pleasing to contemplate the wisdom of his liberal mind, which directed its powers to civilise and improve the fierce natives. He assisted them to build temples, forums, and more convenient habitations. He inspired them with a love of education; he applauded their talents; flattered them as possessing a genius superior to the Gauls; and he persuaded the sons of the chiefs to study letters. The Roman dress, language, and literature gradually spread among the natives. All this was improvement; but human advantages are mingled with imperfections. The civilisation of Rome also introduced its luxury and baths, porticoes, and sensual banquets became as palatable to the new subjects as to their corrupted masters. 16 Four legions were kept in the island. Their labours pervaded it with four great military roads, that became the chief Saxon highways; and in the military stations, upon and near them, laid the foundations of our principal towns and cities. The Roman laws and magistracies were every where established, and the British lawyers, as well as the British ladies", have obtained the panegyrics of the

15 His animated, and no doubt much amplified and polished speech is in Vit. Agric. s. 30.

16 Tac. Ag. s. 21.

17 The stern Juvenal has

Gallia causidicos docuit facunda Britannos.

Sat.

And Martial has an epigram on the decus formæ of a British

BOOK Roman classics.

I.

A. C. 121.

It is beautifully said by Rutilius, that Rome filled the world with her legislative triumphs, and caused all to live under one common pact; that she blended discordant nations into one country; and by imparting to those she conquered a companionship in her rights and laws, made the earth one great united city. 18

BRITAIN, nearly half a century after Agricola, was visited by the Emperor Hadrian, who ordered the construction of a military work, from the mouth of the Tyne to the Solway Firth, as the boundary of the Roman provinces in Britain. In the next reign, of Antoninus Pius, the Romans penetrated again to the isthmus, between the firths of Forth and Clyde; and built another military rampart, for the farthest boundary of their empire in Britain. 19 In 170 the Romans are said to have deserted all the country which lay to the north of the wall of Antoninus. 20

AFTER this period, the Roman legions in Britain began to support their commanders in their competitions for the empire. During these disputes,

lady, whom he calls Claudia Rufina. The epithet of blue-eyed, which he applies to the Britons, was also given to them by Seneca. All the northern nations of Europe exhibit in their physiognomy, this contrast with the black eyes and darker skins of Italy.

18

Legiferis mundum complexa triumphis
Fædere communi vivere cuncta facit -
Fecisti patriam diversis gentibus unam—
Dum que offers victis proprii consortia juris
Urbem fecisti quod prius orbis erat.

Rutil. Itin.

19 "Betwixt them Agricola had formerly erected a line of forts. These had not been destroyed, and Lollius joined them together by a long rampart." Whit. Manch. vol. ii. p. 86. 8vo. 20 Ibid.

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two unsubdued nations in the northern parts of CHAP. Britain, the Caledonians and Meatæ, broke through the rampart between the firths, and harassed the province. The emperor Severus came to Britain, to repress them. 21 His wars in Scotland cost him A. C. 207. much toil, and many men; but he subdued his wild opponents, and, instead of the weak barrier of Hadrian, he erected an immense wall of stone, twelve The wall feet high, and eight feet thick, strengthened with built. towers, castles, and stations at proper distances, and defended by a ditch and military way. This great work (the vestiges of which are still visible in several places) was built nearly parallel to that of Hadrian, at the distance of a few paces further to the north, and from the east coast near Tinmouth, to the Solway firth at Boulness, on the west coast.22 Severus died at York. As it was soon after this A. C. 211. period that the Saxons began to molest Britain, we shall proceed to narrate the history of the invasion and occupation of Britain, by the Saxons and Angles, after first stating all that can be collected of their authentic history before they left the conti

nent.

21 Herodian, lib. iii. p. 83. Xiphelin in Sever. p. 339. 22 Eutropius, lib. viii.; and see Henry's History of England, vol. ii. App. No. 9., and Horsley Britannia Romana. We derive some curious information on the Roman stations and residence in Britain, from the compilation of Richard of Cirencester, first printed in 1757 from a MS. of the fourteenth century. It presents us with eighteen Itinera, which, he says, he collected from the remains of records which a Roman general had caused to be made. Mr. Whitaker's remarks upon it, a little tinged with his sanguine feelings, are in his Hist. Manch. vol. ii. p. 83-91.

С Н А Р.
I.

THE

BOOK II.

CHAP. I.

The Origin of the SAXONS.

HE Anglo-Saxons were the people who transported themselves from the Cimbric peninsula, and its vicinity, in the fifth and sixth centuries, into England. They were branches of the great Saxon confederation, which, from the Elbe, extended itself at last to the Rhine. The hostilities of this formidable people had long distressed the western regions of Europe; and when the Gothic nations overran the most valuable provinces of Rome, the Anglo-Saxons invaded Britain soon after the Romans quitted it. The ancient inhabitants, and the progeny of the Roman settlers, disappeared as the new conquerors advanced, or accepted their yoke; and Saxon laws, Saxon language, Saxon manners, government, and institutions, overspread the land.

THIS revolution, than which history presents to us none more complete, has made the fortunes of the Saxons, during every period, interesting to us. Though other invaders have appeared in the island, yet the effects of the Anglo-Saxon settlements have prevailed beyond every other. Our language, our government, and our laws, display our Gothic ancestors in every part: they live, not merely in our annals and traditions, but in our civil institutions and perpetual discourse. The pa

I.

rent-tree is indeed greatly amplified, by branches CHAP. engrafted on it from other regions, and by the new shoots, which the accidents of time, and the improvements of society, have produced; but it discovers yet its Saxon origin, and retains its Saxon properties, though more than thirteen centuries have rolled over, with all their tempests and vicissitudes.

ALTHOUGH the Saxon name became, on the continent, the appellation of a confederacy of nations, yet, at first, it denoted a single state. The Romans began to remark it, during the second century of the Christian æra; until that period, it had escaped the notice of the conquerors of the world, and the happy obscurity was rewarded by the absence of that desolation which their ambition poured profusely on mankind.

first men

PTOLEMY, the Alexandrian, was the first writer Saxons whom we know to have mentioned the Saxons. By tioned by the passage in his Geography, and by the concur- Ptolemy. rence of all their future history, it is ascertained, that, before the year 141 after Christ', there was a people called Saxones, who inhabited a territory at the north side of the Elbe, on the neck of the Cimbric Chersonesus, and three small islands, at the mouth of this river. From the same author it is also clear, that the Saxones were of no great im

1 Ptolemy lived in the reign of Marcus Aurelius, according to Suidas, vol. ii. p. 646.; but he testifies himself, in the 7th book Mag. Synt. p. 167., that he made astronomical observations at Alexandria in the 2d year of Ant. Pius, or ann. Christ, 139. 3 Fab. Bibl. Græc. p. 412. He speak salso of an eclipse of the moon in the 9th of Adrian, or ann. Chr. 125. De la Lande's Astron. i. p. 312. He mentions no observation beyond 141. Ib. 117.

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