England

nds off from the mainland. Perhaps it was the result of a convulsive spasm as Mother Earth took a new wrinkle

France"; and the chalk cliffs of the greatest of these islands faced the newcomer to suggest to the Romans the name of Terra Alba: perhaps

and numberless islands to be British. And when the astonishing disproportion between the British Islands and the British Empire has been grasped, it can be made the more astonishing by reducing the British Islands down to England as the actual centre from which all this greatness has radiated. It is true that the British Empire is the work of t

is neat satire, founded on a slight foundation of truth. Very often "England" is confounded with "Great Britain" when there is discussion of Imperial greatness. I do not want to come under suspicion of inexactness, which that confusion of terms shows. But writing of England, and England alone, it is just to claim at the outset that the actual first beginning of that great British power which has eclipsed all records of the world was in England: and it is worth the while to inquire into the causes which made for the growth of that power. It is necessary, indeed, to make that inquiry and get to know

ntitled to add the beauty of the scene to the beauty of the deed?" Assuredly "yes" to that question from Emerson, and assuredly, too, they pay back every day what they have borrowed, giving to a noble landscape the added charm of its human association with a noble deed. The white cliffs of England are beautiful and impressive as they show like gleaming ramparts defending green fields and fruitful valleys. But they

England in the making before co

to have effected very much change in the national type by the time that history came on the scene to make her records. C?sar found the Britons very like the Gauls. They had not developed into a maritime people. Fisheries they had, for food and for pearls; but they had none of the piratical adventurousness of the Norsemen. That they were naked, woad-

ame to their land. Thus near Northampton there is a place which used to be a camp of the Britons prior to the Roman occupation. The camp has an

bit), and a well-formed pot-hook made of twisted iron. In bronze there were remains of two sword scabbards, four brooches, some fragments belonging to horse harness, pins and rings, and a small spoon. There were also glass beads and rings, a fragment of jet, a number of spindle whorls for spinning, bone combs used in weaving, and about twenty triangular-shaped bricks pierced through each corner, considered to be loom weights to keep the w

able evidence of these relics is that the pre-Roman Briton could spin and weave, knew how to plough and when to sow, was an excellent carpenter, and was

the coast of Cornwall can reasonably be identified as the Casserterrides of the Ph?nicians, where the merchants of Tyre and Sidon bought tin, giving cloth in exchange. It is said, indeed, that an ingot of tin with a Ph?nician mark upon it was dredged up once from Falmo

, CANTERBU

t in a certain district the rain from heaven had been withheld so long, and grass had so long disappeared, that when at last relief came and the grass grew the sheep would not eat it, as they did not recognise what it was!) But perhaps Hecat?us was serious. It is not at all unlikely that the gossip Hecat?us h

d over Ireland can best be explained by a theory of sun worship. Stonehenge, in the south of England, which dates back to about 1500 year

the Yorkshire Wolds-it is clear from recent excavations-there was a thick local population of men in the Neolithic Age. The burial mounds of these Neolithic tribes have lately been excavated, and have given much valuable evidence as to the history of Man. The "Ipswich Man," too-the indubitab

at least the use of skins. For those Britons were responsible for that "Celtic fringe" which to-day shows so largely in our poetry and our politics, and in other walks o

uld never have overflowed to send out tidal waves of conquest like the Norsemen or the Goths. Possibly even in those early days he had his Celtic qualities of poetry and imagination a

es, which gave easy highways to the Roman galleys. The gentle contours of the country made easy the building of the Roman roads, which were the chief agents of Roman civilisation. But the Roman dominion in the British Islands stopped with

d a climate singularly mild and promotive of fertility. When the separation from the mainland came because of the cutting of the English Channel, the Gallic tribes left in Britain began to acquire, as the fruits of

interest which was aided by the singular beauty and fertility of the country. It was not long before Carausius, a Roman general in Britain, had set himself up as independent of Italy, and with the aid of sea-power he maintained his position for some years. The Romans and the Britons, too, freely intermarried, and at the time when the failing power of the Empire compelled the withdrawal of the Roman garrison, the south of Britain was as much Romanised as, say, northern Africa or Spain. All the appurtenances of Roman civilisation had been brought to B

new cities. This made necessary a great military organisation, which has left its mark on the England of to-day in the Roman roads and the sites of Roman military camps dotted all over the country from the Thames to the Tweed. The

hat the south Briton of England was rather a soft fellow. Since, as we will find later, the Anglo-Saxon-once comfortably settled in England-showed a tendency also to become a soft fellow, and had to be pricked to greatness by the Dane and the Norman, it would almost seem that this gentle, green, cloudy England has ultimately a softening ef