Its entire extent is about ninety thousand square miles, or nearly twice the area of the State of New York.

It is divided into counties, or shires, of which England has forty, Wales twelve, Scotland thirty-three.

Its climate is moist with the vapors that rise forever from the great sea-girdle, and its sky sombre with the clouds that are fed by ceaseless exhalations, -conditions which, however conducive to splendor of verdure, are less nurturing to refined and nimble. thought than to sluggish and melancholy temperament; for man, forced to accommodate himself to circumstances, contracts habits and aptitudes corresponding to them.

No European country should have a deeper interest for English or American readers; none is so rich in learning and science, in wise men and useful arts; but nothing in its early existence indicated the greatness it was destined to attain. We are to think of it in those dim old days as, intellectually and physically, an island in a northern sea - the joyless abode of rain and surge, forest and bog, wild beast and sinewy savage, which, as it struggled from chaos into order, from morning into prime, should become the residence of civilized energy and Christian sentiment, of smiling love and sweet poetic dreams.

Britons. When we learn that the same grammatical principles, the same laws of structure, dominate throughout the languages of Europe, and that, even when their apparent differences are most obvious, it may yet be proved that there is a complete identity in their main roots, there can be no shadow of doubt that they were once identical, and that the many peoples who use them, once, long before the beginning of recorded annals, dwelt together in the same pastoral tents. Somewhere in the quadrilateral which extends from the Indus to the Euphrates, and from the Oxus to the Persian Gulf, amid scenery 'grandiose yet severe,' lived this mother-race, unknown even to tradition, but revealed by linguistic science,― parent of the speculative subtlety of Germany, of the imperial energy of England, of the vivid intelligence of France, of the glory that was Greece and the grandeur that was Rome. Its most ancient name with which we are acquainted is Aryas, derived from the root ar, to plough, and which therefore implies originally an agricultural as distinguished from a rude and nomadic people. Just when it began to wander away from its cradle-land is un

known; but gradually, perhaps by the natural growth of population, perhaps by the restless spirit of enterprise, the old home was abandoned; and it often happened that a wandering band parted asunder into two or more others in the course of its wanderings, who forgot, as they separated, the rock whence they were hewn and the hole of the pit whence they were digged. In most cases they entered upon territory already inhabited by other races, but these were commonly either destroyed or driven from the select parts into out-of-the-way corners.

First of all, in quest of new fortunes, came the Celts, pressing their way into Germany, Italy, Spain, Gaul (now France), and thence into Britain. The area over which Celtic names are found diffused shows the original extent of their dominion. These preEnglish Celts, ever waning and dying, survive chiefly in the modern Highlanders, Irish' and Welsh." Their history, as Britons, finds its earliest solid footing in the narrative of a Roman soldier. Early historians, indeed, who could look into the far and shadowy past with an unquestioning confidence, marshalled kings and dynasties in complete chronology and exact succession. They made British antiquity run parallel with 'old hushed Egypt,' with the prophets and judges of Israel. We are gravely told of one British king who flourished in the time of Saul, of another who was contemporary with Solomon; that King Lear had grown old in government when Romulus and Remus were suckled; that the Britons were sprung from Trojan ancestry, and took their name from Brutus, who, an exile and troubled wanderer, was directed by the oracle of Diana to come to Albion,'—

That pale, that white-faced shore,

Whose foot spurns back the ocean's roaring tides.'

Standing before the altar of the goddess, with vessel of wine and blood of white hart, he had repeated nine times,

1 Meaning Men of the West.'

2 Meaning Strangers.'

The island, not yet Britain, was ruled over by Albion, a giant, and son of Neptune, who gave it his name. Presuming, says one account, to oppose the progress of Hercules in his western march, he was slain.

In deep sleep, in vision of the night, he was answered,

Brutus there lies beyond the Gallic bounds
An Island which the western sea surrounds,
By giants once possessed; now few remain
To bar thy entrance, or obstruct thy reign.
To reach that happy shore thy sails employ;
There fate decrees to raise a second Troy,
And found an empire in thy royal line,

Which time shall ne'er destroy, nor bounds confine.'

We call these stories legendary; once- -as late as the seventeenth century-they were accredited history. Certainly, the faith which received them as such seems to us better than the vicious scepticism which would beggar us of the accumulated inheritance of ages by destroying belief in the evidence. They may, and doubtless do, contain germs of truth-left on the shifting sands as wave after wave of forgotten generations broke on the shores of eternity. Many a mighty empire, it is true, has faded forever out of the memory of man; but much that was once thought irretrievably lost has been reclaimed; and, hereafter, historical science may bring to light from the dark oblivion of these pre-historic Britons more than is now dreamed of in our philosophy.

Fables of a line of kings before the Romans, have left one legend that has become to all a wondrous reality - - the story of King Lear, transmuted by the alchemy of genius into perhaps the most impressive and awful tragedy in the range of dramatic literature.

Roman Conquest.-Meanwhile, our first authentic information in regard to them is given by Julius Cæsar, who, fifty-five years before Christ, led his brass-mailed legions into Britain from Gaul. If the attack was fierce, the resistance was heroic, and marks the rising pulse in that flood

'Of British freedom which, to the open sea
Of the world's praise, from dark antiquity
Hath flowed.'

While the Roman standard-bearer leaped into the waves, and bade his hesitating comrades follow, the Britons dashed into the surf to strike the invader before his foot polluted their soil.. The invasion added nothing to the Roman power or pride. At the end of his campaigns, Cæsar had viewed the island rather than possessed it; and when he gave thanks at Rome to the

gods, it may be questioned whether it was for a conquest or an

escape.

Under his successors, however, about the year 85, when the Republic had become the Empire, the central and southern portion of the country became a Roman province, and was subject to Roman rule nearly four hundred years.

Slow, feeble and imperfect victory, as in the evening of a well-fought day, when the veteran's arm is less strong and his passions less violent.

Effects. During this time much was done to improve the condition of the natives. The Roman coins, laws, language, were introduced. Governed with justice, they became less estranged. Schools were established. The conquered were grouped together in cities guarded by massive walls, and linked together by a net-work of magnificent roads, which ran straight from town to town. The modern railways of England often follow the line of these Roman roads. Agriculture and the useful arts prospered. Many came from Italy, and built temples, palaces, public baths, and other splendid structures, living in great luxury and delight. Their beautiful floors, composed of differently colored brick, and arranged in elegant patterns, are occasionally unearthed for cornfields and meadows now cover this Roman splendor, and new cities have risen upon the ruins of the old.

But Roman civilization was arrested and modified by the calamities of the fifth century. In the anarchy and bloodshed of barbarian invasion, the Romanized Britons, who had thus far preserved their national identity, went down; albeit, in their fall, they were as forest leaves strewn by autumnal winds - leaving behind them a fertilizing power in the soil, whence other trees should bud and bloom in the light of other summers, and gather strength to battle with the inclemencies of other winters. The imperial armies brought with them the Christian faith; and Britain, about to undergo a new yoke, had received the principle that was destined to save her from complete desolation. Even in the savage North, where Roman arms had failed to penetrate, Christ had conquered souls.

Anglo-Saxon Conquest.-In the north and west, sheltered by their mountain fastnesses, were the Celtic Picts and Silures, whom no severity could reduce to subjection and no resistance

restrain from plunder. For two centuries they had been the terror of the civilized Britons, as wild animals harass and perse-cute the tame of their own species.

Side by side with them, and often driving them back upon their own territory, were the Scots, a Celtic tribe originally from Ireland, whence they crossed in so great a number in their little flat-bottomed boats as finally to give their own name to the district they invaded. In 368 we find their united hordes pursuing their depredations as far as London, and repelled with great difficulty by Theodosius, a Roman general.

Soon thereafter the Empire began falling in pieces, and at length its legions were wholly withdrawn from Britain for the defense of Italy against the Goths. The heart of the Britons was faint. They had been so long defended by their Roman masters that when left alone they were incapable of defending themselves. Piteously, but vainly, they entreated once more for protection, exclaiming, 'The barbarians drive us to the sea, and the sea drives us back to the barbarians.' In their extremity they applied, with the usual promises of land and pay, to the Germanic tribes of the Jutes, who, driven by the pressure of want or of foes from the sunless woods and foggy clime of their native Jutland, had already spread their ravages along the eastern shores of Britain, and whose pirate-boats were not improbably cruising off the coast at the moment,

"Then, sad relief, from the bleak coast that hears

The German Ocean roar, deep-blooming, strong,
And yellow-haired, the blue-eyed Saxon1 came.'

They came to stay-to settle a people and to found a state. The fame of their adventure attracted others, till, their numbers swelling, they treacherously turned their arms against the nation they came to protect, and established themselves on the fruitful plains of Kent.

From the sand-flats of Holstein and the morasses of Friesland swarmed the Saxons in successive bands, and settled, with sword and battle-axe, to the south, west and east, founding the kingdoms of Sussex, Wessex and Essex.

From the wild waste of Sleswick, swept by the blast of the North, wan and ominous, poured the Angles in a series of

1A generic name by which they and their neighbors were known to the Romans, though conveniently applied in particular to a southern tribe.