Obscured by fogs, and beyond the horizon of Civilization, a branch of
the Aryan race known as Britons were there leading lives as primitive
as the American Indians, dwelling in huts shaped like beehives, which
they covered with branches and plastered with mud. While Phidias was
carving immortal statues for the Parthenon, this early Britisher was
decorating his abode with the heads of his enemies; and could those
shapeless blocks at Stonehenge speak, they would, perhaps, tell of
cruel and hideous Druidical rites witnessed on Salisbury Plain, ages
ago.

[Sidenote: Caesar's Invasion, 55 B.C. Britain a Roman Province, 45 A.D.
Boadicea 61 A.D.]

Rumors of the existence of this people reached the Mediterranean three
or four hundred years before Christ, but not until Caesar's invasion of
the Island (55 B.C.) was there any positive knowledge of them.

The actual conquest of Britain was not one of Caesar's achievements.
But from the moment when his covetous eagle-eye viewed the chalk-cliffs
of Dover from the coast of Northern Gaul, its fate was sealed. The
Roman octopus from that moment had fastened its tentacles upon the
hapless land; and in 45 A.D., under the Emperor Claudius, it became a
Roman province. In vain did the Britons struggle for forty years. In
vain did the heroic Boadicea (during the reign of Nero, 61 A.D.), like
Hermann in Germany, and Vercingetorix in France, resist the destruction
of her nation by the Romans. In vain did this woman herself lead the
Britons, in a frenzy of patriotism; and when the inevitable defeat
came, and London was lost, with the desperate courage of barbarian she
destroyed herself rather than witness the humiliation of her race.