Roman wall, and some other structures, there is no trace of the
Romans in England. Their polity, laws, and language alike vanished,
and did not reappear for centuries, when their laws and language
were reimported.

I should not be disposed to estimate the population of England and
Wales, at the retirement of the Romans, at more than 1,500,000.
They were like a flock of sheep without masters, and, deprived of
the watch-dogs which over-awed and protected them, fell an easy
prey to the invaders.





III. THE SCANDINAVIANS.


The Roman legions and the outlying semi-military settlements along
the Rhine and the Danube, forming a cordon reaching from the German
Ocean to the Black Sea, kept back the tide of barbarians, but the
volume of force accumulated behind the barrier, and at length it
poured in an overwhelming and destructive tide over the fair and
fertile provinces whose weak and effeminate people offered but a
feeble resistance to the robust armies of the north. The Romans,
under the instruction of Caesar and Tacitus, had a faint idea of
the usages of the people inhabiting the verge that lay around the
Roman dominions, but they had no knowledge of the influences that
prevailed in "the womb of nations," as Central Europe appeared to
the Latins, who saw emerging therefrom hosts of warriors, bearing