Tubular Bridges. Railways and Locomotives. The Electric Telegraph.-Probable Influence of augmented Means of Inter- course on International Relations. - Novelties of Travel and QUEEN VICTORIA. — CONTINENTAL REVOLUTIONS OF 1848. State of France in 1848.-Discontents of the People.-Government of Louis-Philippe; its Difficulties and Arbitrary Character.- Three Days' Insurrection in Paris. — Risings in Berlin, Vienna, and Milan. -Failure of the General Fermentation, and the Re- ascendancy of the Military.- Communism in Paris; its subver- sive Theories. Dreadful Conflicts with the Red Republicans. - Prince Napoleon elected President of the French Republic. — Alarm of the National Assembly at Democratic Tendencies; three Millions of Electors disfranchised. - Struggle for Ascend- ancy between the Prince President and the National Assembly. The Military occupy Paris, and the Assembly is dissolved. — New Scheme of Government promulgated by the President; the Empire reestablished in the Person of Napoleon III. — Policy and Popu- larity of the French Emperor.-French Loans. - Effects produced in England by the Continental Revolutions.- Famine in Ireland; subsequent improved State of the Country. - Discoveries of Gold in California and Australia; their Influence on the Progress of States and Colonies.-The World's Fair, or Great Exhibition of Sudden Vicissitudes in European Affairs. - Differences between Turkey and Russia; the Holy Places. - Russia claims a Pro- tectorate over the Greek Subjects of the Porte. - Aggression on the Danubian Principalities.-Intervention of France and England. — Futile Attempts at Negotiation by the Great Powers. — War declared against Russia by England and France.-Concessions to Neutrals.Naval Blockade of the Russian Empire. - Invasion of the Crimea by the Allied Armies. - Battle of the Alma and Siege of Sebastopol. Peculiarities in the Situation of the For- tress, and the Crimean Peninsula. - Capture of the Mamelon and of the Malakoff Tower.-Subsequent Position of the Belligerent Armies. Inutility of more protracted Hostilities. - Changes favourable to Peace; Death of the Emperor Nicholas. - Alex- ander II.; his Address to the Nobility of Moscow. Difficulties of France and Russia. - Pacific Indications of the French Em- peror; his Address on closing the Paris Exposition. Peace Congress. — Treaty of Paris; its important Guarantees for Otto- man Independence. -The Firmans of the Porte. - Declaration of Maritime Law in War.—Privateering abolished, and Neu- tral Rights extended. International Arbitration mooted by the Congress; its probable Influences on European Wars.-Losses CONCLUSION, AND PRESENT ASPECTS. Chief Agencies conducive to England's Greatness.-The Aristocracy and Productive Orders. - Past and Present Civil Agitation.— Fusion of Classes and Concurrence of Purpose. Decline of Parties, from Settlement of Great Questious, and Harmony of the Productive Interests. Unequalled Prosperity of Agriculture and Commerce. Elements of National Strength. - Quietude of the Religious, Philosophical, and Literary World. - No Symptoms of National Degeneracy from the pervading Tranquillity.— Tendency to Refinement among the Masses. —Characteristics of Crime. Increase of Property, and Diminution of Personal Of- fences.-Reform of Criminals. —Improvements in Oxford and Cambridge Universities. — Preliminary Examination of Candi- dates for the Civil Departments of the Government. - Disposi- tion to look through Mediæval Spectacles. -New Palace of Westminster and the Clubhouses. - Sir Joshua Reynolds and the Old Masters.- Prospective Metropolitan Improvements - 782 ENGLAND'S GREATNESS. sion. CHAPTER I. ROMAN AND ANGLO-SAXON DOMINATION. Obscure origin of States. — Aborigines of Britain.— Roman InvaCondition of the Natives. - Benefits from Roman Dominion. -Origin of the Anglo-Saxons; Changes under the New Mastery. -Proportion of Villeins, Cottars, and Slaves. - Celtic traces in Language and Usages. — Roman Civilisation preserved. — AngloSaxon Laws and Institutions; Laws of Alfred. Each Subjugation tended to National Improvement. —Antiquities of the Ante-Norman Period. Erroneous Ascription of Stonehenge and the Round Towers. THE origin of most communities is necessarily obscure. They have generally commenced with an untutored race; but savages can have no history any more than an adult of his earliest childhood. The essentials of history are monuments, records, tradition or oral testimony; but these form elements of civilisation found only in nations who have made some advance in the arts of life, by which the memory of their acts and attainments is preserved and transmitted. Tribes of people that are apparently B indigenous, or little advanced from the natural state, do not command such requisites; they may exist for ages, and then disappear, leaving no trace of their ephemeral passage any more than the wild animal with which they have been associated. In this way it is likely that for a long course of time prior to the historic age all the great continents and islands of the earth were peopled by successive flights of inhabitants, the strongest overpowering or extirpating their weaker predecessors. But the result is different with more recent states, that spring from colonies planted by civilised ancestors, and which, from the outset, commence with the accumulated acquisitions of the mother country. The earliest social developments of these offer no unrecorded blank, but the narrative of their progress is complete from the beginning of their career. In Britain the first, or aboriginal, settlers appear to have been in the former or non-historical stage of development; and little reliable evidence can be collected by whom, or when, or how, the island came to be inhabited. The most probable conjecture is that it was peopled from the adjacent continent, and the earliest visitors were of the Celtic race. This race had immemorially occupied the entire of Central and Western Europe, the northern and eastern parts being peopled by the Teutones or Gothic nations, and who at a later period possessed themselves of the south and southeastern parts of Britain by driving inland their Celtic predecessors. Similar ties in language, manners, superstitions, and government attest the Celtic derivation of the early Britons. The topographical nomenclature of the country is generally Celtic, especially the names of the more unchangeable parts of nature, as of rivers, mountains, and lakes. The Saxons, who subverted and tried to change ABORIGINES OF BRITAIN. everything, gave new names to the towns and villages; but the geographical names which are usually founded on less variable physical characteristics of the objects to which they are applied mostly survived this compulsory vicissitude. Julius Cæsar, who made the first descent on the island B. C. 53, found the Britons barbarous, but not in the savage state. They were divided into forty nations or tribes, who were often at war, but who united their forces to resist a common enemy. Those occupying the inland and northern parts of the island were the least cultivated, clothing themselves with the skins of beasts, and living chiefly on the spontaneous fruits of the earth and by the pasturing of cattle. The occupants of the south and south-eastern coast are conjectured to have been immigrants from Belgic Gaul, and were more civilised, and apparently on a similar level of social advancement with the existing Kaffirs and other semi-barbarous races of Africa. Their dress was of their own manufacture, and consisted of a square mantle, covering a vest and trowsers, encircled with a belt. Their houses were built of wood, covered with straw; some had stone foundations, with a conical roof pierced in the centre, for the twofold purpose of admitting the light and letting out the smoke. It does not appear that the Britons had any assemblage of houses deserving the name of a town. "What they call a town," says Cæsar, "is a tract of woody country surrounded by a vallum or high bank and a ditch, for the security of themselves and cattle against the incursions of their enemies ;" and Strabo remarks, "The forests of the Britons are their cities, for when they have enclosed 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 long dura |