HISTOEY 



OF THE 



ENGLISH LANDED INTEEEST 

 3t5 Cuetoin^, Xawa, ant) Hijnculture, 



CHAPTER I. 



THE ERA BEFORE THE ROMAN OCCUPATION, 



Of that portion of British rural life which, for all practical 

 purposes, may be termed pre-historic, our information is pro- 

 vokingly scant. We, the descendants of the ancient Britons, 

 would fain thrust aside the barrier of ignorance which shuts 

 us out from those interesting Druidical days. The Greek and 

 the Roman historians do but whet our appetites by the 

 scanty food for reflection which the sum of all their allusions 

 to ancient Britain affords us. The vaguest of vague allusions 

 in Herodotus, Aristotle, and Polybius, tell us of the existence 

 of those ten tin islands ^ up in the North Seas ; and this litera- 

 ture contains the sole reliable links with the past. The traders 

 of Tyre and Sidon, who had carried the Phoenician flag into 

 many an out-of-the-way sea, had no doubt visited these shores 

 in order to barter their wares for our tin, used when amal- 

 gamated with copper for their bronze implements. 



^ Arist., De Mundo c. iii. (quoted Mon. Hist. Brit.), p. 1. Herodot., 

 Hist., lib. iii. § 115. Polyb., Hist., lib. iii. c. 57. 



1 B 



