liarity, as well as on account of its large size-fif- | a ditch, for the security of themselves and cattle teen inches in diameter at the top, and twenty-two inches in height-it is distinguished as the Stonehenge Urn, and contained an interment of burned CELTIC FUNERAL URNS.-From Sir R. Colt Hoare's bones. It forms the largest figure in the accom- against the incursion of their enemies;" and Strabo corroborates this in the following words: "The forests of the Britons are their cities; for when they have inclosed a very large circuit with felled trees, they build within it houses for themselves, and hovels for their cattle. These buildings are very slight, and not designed for permanence." It is conjectured that these notices refer only to the winter habitations of the Britons, and that the circumvallated hills called British camps, were in summer the residences and sanctuaries of the Celtic rural populations. These are the caer of the Welsh and the Gaelic dun. A lengthy range of these intrenched hills appears on the downs of the Sussex coast, and interspersed with them are a series of hills which present a smaller surface at the top, and their site so chosen that where one occurs between two of the larger hills, the next in succession is situated on a spur of the downs, at an angle with the preceding one, so as to be visible clear of the chain of hills to the next eminence of a similar kind. These are surmised to have been adapted as beacons, for spreading MOUNT CABURN BEACON, near Lewes, Sussex.-Drawn from nature and on wood, by H. G. Hine. knobs, which seem to have been first made in the form of glass stoppers to a bottle, and afterwards inserted into circular an alarm in case of invasion, or for the rites and observances of fire worship. The Herefordshire Beacon, one of the Malvern Hills, is a conspicuous example, being surrounded by a triple rampart; and with others of a similar kind, bears a striking analogy to the presumed original form of the great tower of Babel, of which, perhaps, its construction was a tradition, and its purpose a similar temple of Belus, for the adoration of the sun and fire, its type and symbol. We have the authority of Cæsar for the skill of the Britons in the art of castrametation; and he instances the capital of Cassivellaunus, which he describes as "admirably defended, both by nature and art." A Celtic stronghold in Cornwall, called Chun Castle, may be cited as a remarkable specimen of this kind of fortified habitation. It is girt about by two circular walls, each separated by a space of thirty feet; the walls are of the kind of masonry called Cyclopean, being constructed of granite masses of various forms and sizes, some of which are five or six feet long, fitted together without cement, so artificially as to offer an equal external surface. The outer wall was surrounded by a ditch nineteen feet wide. A portion of the wall is ten feet high, and about five feet in thickness. It is surmised by Borlase that the inner wall must have been at least fifteen feet high, in consideration of its bulk, which is full twelve feet in thickness. This stronghold has only one entrance, which is towards the south-west; and it attests great proficiency in the art of defence. This opening is six feet wide in the narrowest part, and sixteen where the walls diverge and are rounded off on either side. There are also indications of steps up to the level of the area within the castle; and the remains of a wall, which crossed the terrace from the outer wall, divided the entrance into two parts at its widest end. The inner wall of the castle comprehends an area of 175 feet north and south, by 180 feet east and west. No indication of buildings appears in the centre, but all round the inner side of the wall are the bases of circular inclosures, which appear to have been the chambers or habitable parts of the castle, similarly disposed to those in the walls of the Saxon castle at Coningsburgh in Yorkshire, and the subsequent early Norman castles. These chambers are from eighteen to twenty feet in diameter, but on the northern side there is a larger apartment, measuring thirty feet by twenty-six.' Other vestiges of Celtic castles of a similar kind exist in Cornwall and Wales. The remains found within these inclosures throw but little light upon the habits of their ancient occupants; deer horns, heaps of bones, and the quern or hand-mill, ANCIENT QUERN, from an example in the British Museum. for grinding meal, only attest the pursuit of the hunter, and the produce of agriculture, by which the lords of those ancient strongholds employed the time which was not engrossed in the more stirring affairs of defence and warlike aggression. The observation of these vestiges serves to prepare us for the contemplation of the more august remains connected with the faith of our early progenitors, among which the monuments of Stonehenge and Avebury are conspicuous. The symbolism of the sun and the serpent, it is conjectured, was betokened in their mystic order 1 Archæologia, vol. xxii. p. 300. and disposition, as well as in the kindred monument of Carnac in Brittany, in which land many of the tribes of Britain found a retreat on the departure of the Romans, and the inroad of Hengist and Horsa-the Teutonic Castor and Pollux. The dolmen or quoit-the witch stone of the scared rustic-is conceived to have been the Druid altar on which the human offering was immolated, when the Vates took their prediction from the convulsion of the limbs, and the particular direction in which the blood of the victim flowed. Whatever may have been its purpose, the dolmen abounds in Armorica, as here, and is to be found in most parts of the Old World. In the ship temples of Ireland, the tradition of the ark is thought to have been symbolized. The hare stone is associated with the patriarchal boundary and memorial stones, and may be relics of a tribe who reached this island at a period prior to the Celtic inroad, and among whom there shone a ray from the dawning of the light now spread over the world in the books of Moses. But while indulging in many a surmise conjured up by the evidence of those monuments, whose interpretation lies buried in the depth of ages, we are awakened by the question of by what means of transport those ancient tribes made their way to the shores of Britain. It has been inferred, from some passages in Cæsar, that the Britons were in possession of a navy. In one of these passages he states that his enemies, the Veneti of Western Gaul, having taken into alliance other neighbouring tribes, sent for aid from Britain, which lay directly over against their coast; but while it is not stated that the aid thus sought was of shipping, no other account indicates that such was the case; and we find no remains of vessels, but those of the simplest and most rude description, to inform us of the attainments of the Britons in the naval art. The canoes that still continue to be dug up from the alluvial beds of our rivers, and the antiseptic depths of our mosses, both in England and Scotland, are of the rudest description. They are made of the entire trunk of a tree, and have been partly hollowed by fire, and partly by the operation of the stave adze, while the outside exhibits no trace of ornament, and very little even of close lopping and smoothness. Of the canoes thus discovered, the length of the smallest varies from seven to eleven feet, and, like those of the Indiaus, they have been impelled by paddles. One of the largest, now in the British Museum, measures thirty-five feet four inches in length, one foot ten inches in depth, and four feet six inches in width 2 Hoar or hare stones, signifying border or boundary stones, the maen hir or mennie gwyr of Wales; men hars in Armorica, a bound-stone.-A Letter by the late William Hamper, F.S.A., Archæologia, vol. xxvi. at the centre. Another vessel of similar character is described by Sir John Clark as having been exhumed in the Carse of Falkirk, in May, 1726. It measured thirty-six feet in length, and four in extreme breadth, and was finely smoothed and polished, both inside and outside, having the usual pointed stem and square stern. It was in such vessels as these that the ruder Britons carried on their coasting and river navigation; and in these also they fished with hooks of bone, and even ventured to attack the whales that happened to get stranded on their coasts or in their estuaries. As such vessels were evidently not intended for adventurous voyages, they required little labour or ingenuity of construction, beyond the mere hollowing of a pine, to render it more buoyant upon the waters. The circumstance of locality, or the genius of a different tribe, may have pro WELSH FISHERMAN OF THE PRESENT DAY WITH CORACLE. duced the variety of canoes of lighter but more fragile materials. These were the barks of ozier, covered with the skins of animals, which were of more ample stowage and lighter draught, but which also required a greater degree of skill to manage, as well as to construct them. The Britons, at the arrival of the Romans, were famed for their ingenuity in basket-work, and this they had turned to the purposes of navigation, when they substituted for the clumsy log a large floating basket. In such, we are told, they could make a six days' voyage, and maintain a close connection with Ireland. These vessels, upon a small scale, and for the purposes of fishing and river navigation, are still used in Wales under the name of cwrwgyl, or coracles; and are so light and portable that, on leaving the stream, the fisherman commonly carries off his boat on his back. sive intercourse with the Gauls, together with the intermixture of Germanic tribes, had greatly assimilated the manners and resources of the inhabitants of South Britain to those of the opposite coasts. Their land produced grain in abundance, and they possessed numerous flocks and herds; whereas the people of the interior, according to Cæsar, grew no grain, but lived on the milk and flesh of their cattle. The inland people, living among their forests and marshes, and in the course of intestine wars of tribe against tribe, had lapsed into a state calculated to develope only the ruder energies; and the more northern parts of the island were yet lower in the scale, procuring a sustenance from the milk of their flocks, and wild fruits, and whatsoever they could procure in hunting; but when these resources failed, they eked out a sustenance by devouring roots and leaves, and in extremity they had recourse to a certain composition, by which, it is said, when they had eaten about the quantity of a bean, their spirits were so admirably supported, that they no longer felt hunger or thirst.' In addition to the abundance of fuel possessed by the Britons in their vast forests, they appear to have been acquainted with the use of coal, quantities of which have been found in British deposits. According to Strabo, they had in use cups, and other vessels of glass, probably imported. Many articles, fashioned in gold and silver of great purity, have been found, which attest the possession and appreciation of those metals. A fine specimen in gold was discovered in a cairn at Mold, in Flintshire. It is a gold breastplate or gorget, embossed with a figured pattern in various degrees of relief. It was REMAINS OF BRITISH BREASTPLATE OR GORGET, tound at Mold, and now in the British Museum. At the period of Caesar's invasion a great change had taken place in the transition of the export trade of the Britons, from the western to the southern shores of the island; and an exten found, with bones of the former owner, as it had been worn, with remnants of coarse cloth or serge, amber beads, and pieces of copper, upon which the gold had been probably fastened. Its extreme length is three feet seven inches, being made apparently to pass under the arms, and meet in the centre of the back, and its width in front, where it is shaped to fit the neck, eight inches. Such are a few of the specimens of early British life that have survived the wreck of eighteen centuries, and which a growing spirit of inquiry, and greater diligence in exploration, are continu- | palaces, and are manifested in grander and more ally enriching with many and valuable additions. It is by such antiquarian researches, be it remembered, however lightly they may be esteemed, that the conditions of a race who have departed are made accessible to the world. The buildings which constitute the homes of a people, and the household utensils that minister to the comforts of daily life, have passed away; the costume by which one nation is distinguished from another, and the personal ornaments by which the different ranks of the same people are indicated, have been more perishable still; even the weapons that were forged for the violence of mortal hatred, and the endurance of hereditary feuds, have become so dimmed and deformed by the rust of ages that their original uses are sometimes matter of ques-picion, and only in part. But in the circle of tion. But, even in the relics of a barbarous people, this utter decay seldom extends to the shrines of their devotion and the dwellings of the dead. The tomb and the temple-the sacred repose of death, and the cheering promise of immortality-excite a stronger solicitude than even that which suffices for the erection of ramparts and enduring memorials. And hence it is that in every country they have survived the monuments of active every-day life, and still remain, not only ir all their original solemn silence, but with much. of their primitive entireness. It is in these mausoleums of buried ages that we are often left to read the history of a people who have passed away; and it is in this manner that we are obliged to study the modes of life and condition of character that prevailed among the early Britons. Their own legends, as we have already seen, are of little avail to guide us; the more consistent accounts that were reduced to writing, and embodied in classical history, were the testimonies of their enemies, and therefore to be received with sus stones and its crumbling altars—in the barrow and its funeral urns-we learn, as from safe though very limited resources, how our earliest ancestors may have lived, and worshipped, and warred, and died, before the destroying enemy had arrived among them, or the doom of extinction been carried into effect. BOOK I. BRITISH AND ROMAN PERIOD.-504 YEARS. FROM B.C. 55 TO A.D. 449. CHAPTER I.-CIVIL AND MILITARY HISTORY. INVASION BY JULIUS CESAR.-B.C. 55-A.D. 43. Early inhabitants of Britain-Motives of Julius Caesar for invading it-Gallant resistance of the natives-Caesar's second invasion-His successes and progress-Submission of the Britons, and its terms-Means of resistance possessed by the Britons-Their war-chariots, cavalry and infantry, weapons-Superior discipline and appointments of the Roman legions. HE conquests of Julius Cæsar | patriotism against the Roman conquerors. With in Gaul brought him within respect to Druidism, Britain perhaps stood in the sight of the coast of Britain; same relation to Gaul that the Island of Mona or and, having established the Ro- Anglesey bore to Britain; and when the Romans man authority in the nearest had established themselves in Gaul, they had the countries on the Continent, same motives for attacking our island that they which are now called France and had, a century later, when they had fixed themBelgium, it was almost as natural selves in Britain, for falling upon Anglesey, as for him to aim at the possession of the centre of the Druids and of British union, our island, as for the masters of Italy to and the source of the remaining national resistinvade Sicily, or the conquerors of India the auce. contiguous island of Ceylon. The disjunction of Britain from the rest of the world, and the stormy but narrow sea that flows between it and the main, were circumstances just sufficient to give a bold and romantic character to the enterprise, without being real barriers to a skilful and courageous general. But there were other motives to impel Cæsar. Britain, or the far greater part of it, was inhabited by a people of the same race, language, and religion as the Gauls; and during his recent and most arduous campaigns, the islanders had assisted their neighbours and kindred of the Continent, sending important aid more particularly to the Veneti, who occupied Vannes in Bretagne, and to other people of Western Gaul who lived near the sea-coast. Cæsar, indeed, says himself that in all his wars with the Gauls the enemies of the Republic had always received assistance from Britain, and that this fact made him resolve to pass over into the island. This island, moreover, seems to have had the character of a sort of Holy Land among the Celtic nations, and to have been considered the great centre and stronghold of the Druids, the revered priesthood of an iron superstition, that bound men, and tribes, and nations together, and inflamed them far more than VOL. I. It is to be remembered, also, that, whatever may have been the views of personal ambition from which Cæsar principally acted, the Romans really had the best of all pleas for their wars with the Gauls, who had been their constant enemies for centuries, and originally their assailants. Their possession of Italy, indeed, could not be considered as secure until they had subdued, or at least impressed with a sufficient dread of their arms, the fierce and restless nations both of Gaul and Germany, some of whom-down almost to the age of Cæsar-had not ceased occasionally to break through the barrier of the Alps, and to carry fire and sword into the home territories of the Republic. These, and the other Northern barbarians, as they were called, had had their eye upon the cultivated fields of the Italic peninsula ever since the irruption of Bellovesus, in the time of the elder Tarquin; and the war the Gauls were now carrying on with Cæsar was only a part of the long contest, which did not terminate till the Empire was overpowered at last by its natural enemies, nearly five centuries afterwards. In the meantime, it was the turn of the Gauls to find the Roman valour, in its highest condition of discipline and efficiency, irresistible; 3 |