could not have been raised without the aid of some ingenious
machines, which are common now, but which the ancient Britons
certainly did not use in making their own uncomfortable houses. I
should not wonder if the Druids, and their pupils who stayed with
them twenty years, knowing more than the rest of the Britons, kept
the people out of sight while they made these buildings, and then
pretended that they built them by magic. Perhaps they had a hand
in the fortresses too; at all events, as they were very powerful,
and very much believed in, and as they made and executed the laws,
and paid no taxes, I don't wonder that they liked their trade.
And, as they persuaded the people the more Druids there were, the
better off the people would be, I don't wonder that there were a
good many of them. But it is pleasant to think that there are no
Druids, NOW, who go on in that way, and pretend to carry
Enchanters' Wands and Serpents' Eggs - and of course there is
nothing of the kind, anywhere.

Such was the improved condition of the ancient Britons, fifty-five
years before the birth of Our Saviour, when the Romans, under their
great General, Julius Caesar, were masters of all the rest of the
known world. Julius Caesar had then just conquered Gaul; and
hearing, in Gaul, a good deal about the opposite Island with the
white cliffs, and about the bravery of the Britons who inhabited it
- some of whom had been fetched over to help the Gauls in the war
against him - he resolved, as he was so near, to come and conquer
Britain next.

So, Julius Caesar came sailing over to this Island of ours, with
eighty vessels and twelve thousand men. And he came from the
French coast between Calais and Boulogne, 'because thence was the