England

e to rob him down to his toga, if they had been left to fight it out, it is hard to say. Probably the course of events would have been that th

considerable importance at t

fruitful women; and they swarmed out of their warrens to over-run the greater part of Europe. You may trace them to the interior of Russia, to Iceland, to Constantinople, some think to North America. But, whatever their path, the British Islands were athwart the track they took, and the British Islands received the most complete flood of Anglo-Saxon blood. Again it was England that made way most easily to the invader.

iscord among the Britons. There is a ballad by Thomas Love Peacock, which treats of

feast of wi

ark dweller

the hours in

sword nor sh

e noblest o

Britain's chie

amid the

he fatal fea

chiefs, three

the festal t

dweller o

nd three alo

pale sweet mea

hief unclos

s on his da

glared at

must refuse to accept the impression (which is implied more often than directly stated) that the Romanised Briton, after the departure of the Roman legions, was quite helpless. Between the Roman departure from Br

nd three Christian men. As for the paynims they were tofore the Incarnation of Christ, which were named, the first Hector of Troy, of whom the history is

Joshua which brought the children of Israel into the land of behest; the second David, King of Jerusale

both in French and English; and the third and last was Godfrey of Bouillon, of whose acts and life I made a book unto the excellent prince and king of noble memory, King Edward the Fourth. The said noble gentleman instantly required me to imprint the history of the said noble king and conqueror, King Arthur, and of his knights, with the history of the Sang

said, that in him that should say or think that there was never such a king called Arthur, might well be credited great folly and blindness; for he said that there were many evidences of the contrary: first ye may see his sepulture in the Monastery of Glastonbury. And also in Polichronicon, i

the castle of Dover ye may see Gawaine's skull and Craddock's mantle, at Winchester the Round Table, in other places Launcelot's sword and many other things. Then all these things considered, there can no man reasonably gainsay but there was a king of this land named Arthur. For in all places, Christian and heathen, he is reputed and taken for one of the nine worthy, and the first of t

ent and defeated in battle the troops of the Roman Emperor. But there were men to fight in England after the Romans left; and those beaten in the fight fell back on Sco

reebooters, the Danes, to claim a share in this delectable island. Dane and Saxon fought it out-the Briton from "the Celtic fringe" occasionally interfering-with all th

's blood; and the landscape will partly explain why in one place there is a Celtic predominance, in

tish. The Normans were descendants of kindred sea-pirates who had settled in Gaul, and mingled their blood with that of the Gauls and Franks. The two races, Anglo-Saxon and Normans, after a while merged amicably enough, the Anglo-Saxon blood predominating, and the present

ine buildings of England date from after the Norman Epoch. But it is a fact which will strike at once the student of those buildings, who afterwards compares them with contemporary Norman buildings in France, that Norman architecture was not transplanted to England. Whilst at Rouen, Lisieux, Caen, Bayeux, you see the churches usually in Flamboyant or Ogival Gothic; in England the churches of about the same date are in a more severe and straight-laced style. It

of battles and kings, but the living history which traces to their sources the streams of our race. The England of to-day is beginning to know the wisdom of a close sympathetic study of the past. One of the signs of this aw

SE, KING'S SCH

n close sympathy with her model for an English pleasaunce. It was a very dainty sward, perhaps of five acres in all, ringed around with trees and bushes in their native wildness, which invaded here and there the grass with an out-thrown clump or extended arm. On such a spot fairies would pitch for their revels, noticing h

turesque, the probable rather than the certain was followed, due warning was given; and the wise plan was adopted of interspersing with the great incidents pages from the familiar life of the people. The Crusade was preached from Chester Cross; side by side with it was shown an

for the Saxons, a centre for the fierce contests between Normans and Welsh, a much-disputed prize in the Civil War, has certainly much history to

erest; and it marches on the right lines to make history not so

at the past let us look