under Cæsar and his successors, and kept in a state of servile thraldom
for four hundred and fifty years. There was but little amalgamation
between them and their military masters. Britain was a most valuable
northern outpost of the Roman Empire, and was occupied by large garrisons,
which employed the people in hard labors, and used them for Roman
aggrandizement, but despised them too much to attempt to elevate their
condition. Elsewhere the Romans depopulated, where they met with barbarian
resistance; they made a solitude and called it peace--for which they gave
a triumph and a cognomen to the conqueror; but in Britain, although
harassed and endangered by the insurrections of the natives, they bore
with them; they built fine cities like London and York, originally
military outposts, and transformed much of the country between the Channel
and the Tweed from pathless forest into a civilized residence.


III. COMING OF THE SAXONS.--Compelled by the increasing dangers and
troubles immediately around the city of Rome to abandon their distant
dependencies, the Roman legions evacuated Britain, and left the people,
who had become enervated, spiritless, and unaccustomed to the use of arms,
a prey to their fierce neighbors, both from Scotland and from the
continent.

The Saxons had already made frequent incursions into Britain, while rival
Roman chieftains were contesting for pre-eminence, and, as early as the
third century, had become so troublesome that the Roman emperors were
obliged to appoint a general to defend the eastern coast, known as _comes
litoris Saxonici_, or count of the Saxon shore.[1]

These Saxons, who had already tested the goodliness of the land, came when
the Romans departed, under the specious guise of protectors of the Britons