The Era before the Roman Occupation. 7 



their occupation into the principahties which ultimately 

 formed our monarchy. It was their militarism and discipline 

 which first taught us how to rule and be ruled ; and it was on 

 us alone of their conquered tributaries that they seem to have 

 cast the famed purple mantle of their imperialism. An 

 Eg3^ptian occupation might have introduced the apotheosis 

 of Agriculture, and a Greek occupation that of Art, but who, 

 if not Eome, could have endov/ed us v/ith the majestic and 

 awful gift of Empire ? ^ 



The Eoman found the Briton a primitive savage, his food 

 partly what he overtook in the chase, partly what he rooted 

 up from an untilled soil ; his home, the forest or cave ; his 

 ideas of art, feathers and dyes. We shall find, as we pursue 

 this history, that he left him with all the incipient evidence 

 of a vigorous nationality, if not powerful government. Nor 

 is it an argument against this that we have exaggerated the 

 primitiveness of his state before the Roman Conquest, because 

 there is historical evidence of a fringe of civilised foreigners - 

 dwelling around his backwoods. Even less is it an argument 

 that we have exaggerated the good done him by the long 

 Eoman occupation, because he fell an easy prey to the Picts 

 and Scots on the one side and the Saxon pirates on the other 

 as soon as his patrons left him. He may be compared to the 

 Israehte as we read of him in Exodus. The long Egyptian 

 bondage had quenched his natural fires, and for forty years 

 he was unfit for warfare, but the old martial feeling of the 

 race eventually triumphed. It was the misfortune of the 

 Briton that he was allowed no such peaceful interval in which 

 he might realise and recover that spirit of enterprise and 

 independence with which he was by nature so largely gifted. 



^ Yirgil, ^n. vi. 851 seq. 



- Ctesar, Bdl. Gall., lib. v. ch. 1-23. 



