I shall cheerfully bear the reproach of having descended below

the dignity of history, if I can succeed in placing before the

English of the nineteenth century a true picture of the life of

their ancestors.

The events which I propose to relate form only a single act of a

great and eventful drama extending through ages, and must be very

imperfectly understood unless the plot of the preceding acts be

well known. I shall therefore introduce my narrative by a slight

sketch of the history of our country from the earliest times. I

shall pass very rapidly over many centuries: but I shall dwell at

some length on the vicissitudes of that contest which the

administration of King James the Second brought to a decisive

crisis.1

Nothing in the early existence of Britain indicated the greatness

which she was destined to attain. Her inhabitants when first they

became known to the Tyrian mariners, were little superior to the

natives of the Sandwich Islands. She was subjugated by the Roman

arms; but she received only a faint tincture of Roman arts and

letters. Of the western provinces which obeyed the Caesars, she

was the last that was conquered, and the first that was flung

away. No magnificent remains of Latin porches and aqueducts are

to be found in Britain. No writer of British birth is reckoned

among the masters of Latin poetry and eloquence. It is not

probable that the islanders were at any time generally familiar

with the tongue of their Italian rulers. From the Atlantic to the

vicinity of the Rhine the Latin has, during many centuries, been

predominant. It drove out the Celtic; it was not driven out by

the Teutonic; and it is at this day the basis of the French,

Spanish and Portuguese languages. In our island the Latin appears

never to have superseded the old Gaelic speech, and could not

stand its ground against the German.

The scanty and superficial civilisation which the Britons had

derived from their southern masters was effaced by the calamities

of the fifth century. In the continental kingdoms into which the

Roman empire was then dissolved, the conquerors learned much from

the conquered race. In Britain the conquered race became as

barbarous as the conquerors.

All the chiefs who founded Teutonic dynasties in the continental

provinces of the Roman empire, Alaric, Theodoric, Clovis, Alboin,

were zealous Christians. The followers of Ida and Cerdic, on the

other hand, brought to their settlements in Britain all the

superstitions of the Elbe. While the German princes who reigned

at Paris, Toledo, Arles, and Ravenna listened with reverence to

the instructions of bishops, adored the relics of martyrs, and

took part eagerly in disputes touching the Nicene theology, the

rulers of Wessex and Mercia were still performing savage rites in

the temples of Thor and Woden.

The continental kingdoms which had risen on the ruins of the

Western Empire kept up some intercourse with those eastern

provinces where the ancient civilisation, though slowly fading

away under the influence of misgovernment, might still astonish

and instruct barbarians, where the court still exhibited the

splendour of Diocletian and Constantine, where the public

buildings were still adorned with the sculptures of Polycletus

and the paintings of Apelles, and where laborious pedants,

themselves destitute of taste, sense, and spirit, could still

read and interpret the masterpieces of Sophocles, of Demosthenes,

and of Plato. From this communion Britain was cut off. Her shores

were, to the polished race which dwelt by the Bosphorus, objects

of a mysterious horror, such as that with which the Ionians of

the age of Homer had regarded the Straits of Scylla and the city

of the Laestrygonian cannibals. There was one province of our

island in which, as Procopius had been told, the ground was