and inconstancy of character. Ireland is chiefly Celtic, but Britain has retained comparatively slight traces of her first population. A branch of the Germans had visited the island even before the Romans, and after the latter came Dane, Saxon and, Norman, in such numbers that the pure aboriginal stock was chiefly left in the From this comhighlands of Scotland and in Wales. mingling the existing British nation is derived. The quick but evanescent endowments of the Celt have been strengthened by the greater breadth and stability of the Germanic infusions. Possessing exclusively neither the levity of the one nor the heaviness of the other, the result has been a national stamina unequalled for physical force, intellect, energy, enterprise, and perseverance.

All the misfortunes of the island, from the earliest period, seem to have left some benefit. The admixture of races, and successive conquests never wholly arrested the progress of improvement. An onward impulse was given in some direction, either moral or material, under every vicissitude of national fortune. After the misery of transition was over the country reaped advantages from each of its three subjugations. The Romans were generous masters; their object was dominion; that achieved, they compensated the vanquished by protection, and instructing them in their laws and institutions. The Saxons were essentially barbarous; but they brought along with them those notions of equal rights which they held in common with all German nations. Except, however, in laying the foundation of popular institutions, and renewing that physical energy of the population which had been partly lost under the fostering sway of the Romans, no other marked advantages can be traced to this class of invaders. Illiterate themselves, they not only undervalued but destroyed the learning planted by their predecessors.

SAXONS AND NORMANS CONTRASTED.

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During their long ascendency, the country hardly knew an interval of repose and of settled government; the only exception is the quarter of a century forming the reign of Edward the Confessor; all the rest was one long disorderly period of strife, waste, turbulence-of wars waged with the previous inhabitants, or with foreigners seeking to dispossess the new occupants, or of contests sometimes between one petty state and another, and sometimes between adverse factions of the same state. The private vices of the Saxons were those of half-savage men.

Su

perstitious, slothful, sensual, addicted to gluttony and drunkenness, without taste or refinement, mean and wretched in their attire, and their dwellings void of comfort: such are the peculiarities attributed by most writers to their moral and domestic economy.

Amidst such distractions and debasing influences, it is not surprising that the national character declined, and no advances were made in any line of public prosperity or greatness. Accordingly, at the era of the Norman invasion, England had acquired no marked position among European nations. In civilisation, the Normans were superior to the Saxons, and in this respect their coming was an advantage. They introduced into the country not only a higher learning but improved modes of life. They set an example of elegance and magnificence, to which the Saxons were strangers, in their festivities, in their apparel, and in their whole expenditure. Instead of wasting the most of their wealth in eating and drinking, their pride was to devote a great part of it to works of permanent utility or embellishment, to the building of castles, churches, and monasteries. The art of architecture in England may be said to have taken its rise from them. By them, also, it is probable that the agriculture of the country was improved, and its com

merce extended. These eventual benefits were certainly purchased by a heavy immediate sacrifice, chiefly, however, at the expense of those classes who had made so profitless an use of their power. Conquests are sometimes a mere change of the ruling dynasty; but the Norman invasion transferred to new masters, together with the dominion of the country, its soil, and inhabitants. The proprietary changed as well as the government; and the Saxon aristocracy were at once dispossessed of political rule and their territorial property. It is the last decided example of the subjugation of one European state by another, and was productive of the important result of firmly consolidating England into one kingdom, having one head, one law, one language, and one supreme legislature,

Before concluding the Ante-Norman period, a short notice is due to the more remarkable Antiquities of the island pertaining to it. Of the passage of the Romans many traces survive in their coins, roads, stations, baths, and pavements, and in the three famous walls or ramparts successively erected or repaired by Agricola, Hadrian, and Severus, to inhibit the incursions of the Scots and Picts. But these remains are familiar from many descriptions, and a repetition of them does not pertain to these preliminary outlines. Traces of the ancient Britons are far more scanty than those of their Roman masters. Being without literature, and with a very limited knowledge of the useful arts, they were destitute of the means for transmitting any historical monuments of their existence, so that hardly a single reliable aboriginal vestige has come down to us; from this description Stonehenge and the Round Towers have by some been considered exceptional, but more careful and recent inquiries appear to have entirely divested these singular structures of the

ORIGIN OF STONEHENGE ETC.

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past, of the extreme antiquity commonly ascribed to them.

The marvellous mostly becomes less or disappears as it is more closely scrutinised. Stonehenge has commonly been considered the colossal remains of a Druid temple. But the reason's that have been urged against so remote and improbable an origin seem unanswerable. The workmanship of the architraves which crown the columnar masses could only have been effected by the use of iron tools, and iron was only made available in Britain a little before the invasion of Julius Cæsar. Mr. Hebert dates the origin of Stonehenge, as not earlier than the fifth century A.D., and for which he adduces the very plausible reason, that neither Stonehenge nor the large barrow that existed at Avebury has been once mentioned by the Romans, though Avebury is within a few yards of their own Bath road; and that both should be passed unnoticed by them during their long occupation of Britain seems hardly accountable, except by the explanation that neither in their time existed.

The famed Round Towers still subsisting in Scotland and Ireland appear to belong to a corresponding or more recent era. According to Mr. Petrie, the period during which the towers were erected extended from the fifth to the thirteenth century of the Christian era; the majority of them were erected in the ninth and tenth centuries, and some as recently as the twelfth. These conclusions are fully established from a careful identification of their architectural characteristics with those of ecclesiastical edifices, known to have been built within these assigned terms. That the towers were built subsequent to the introduction of Christianity is proved by the fact that prior to this period the Irish were unacquainted with lime-cement and the construction of the arch. They

possess many remains of buildings of older date, but in none of them has there been found any trace of an arch or of lime-cement, both which are found in the structure of the towers. In style of architecture the towers correspond with that of the churches with which they appear to have been locally connected, though separated from them. On several of the towers Christian emblems are observable, and others exhibit those details universally admitted to belong to Christian times.

As to the original uses of the Round Towers, they seem to have been intended for the double purpose of belfries and of castles; the first as steeples for summoning the people to prayers and religious rites; and the second as ecclesiastical fortresses for the safe custody of relics and old church treasures against the predaceous violence peculiar to their era. In proof of these conclusions of Mr. Petrie, that they constituted the belfries of adjoining churches, I will add the facts which he appears to have overlooked, namely, that the belfries of Venice and in Russia at this day are all built and stand apart from the churches to which they belong. For the severance of the two, and the towers surviving the churches to which they were appendant, the obvious explanation may be found in the different durability of their materials. Even in England nearly up to the Conquest the walls of churches and of many cathedrals were of wood; but for the more conservative uses to which the round towers were consecrated there were manifest utilities in building them of a less perishable material.