the rights of civil society. Such
gentle treatment might secure the allegiance of a fierce people, who had
been recently subdued on the confines of Wales and Cornwall. The sage
Ina, the legislator of Wessex, united the two nations in the bands
of domestic alliance; and four British lords of Somersetshire may be
honorably distinguished in the court of a Saxon monarch.

The independent Britons appear to have relapsed into the state of
original barbarism, from whence they had been imperfectly reclaimed.
Separated by their enemies from the rest of mankind, they soon became an
object of scandal and abhorrence to the Catholic world. Christianity was
still professed in the mountains of Wales; but the rude schismatics, in
the _form_ of the clerical tonsure, and in the _day_ of the celebration
of Easter, obstinately resisted the imperious mandates of the Roman
pontiffs. The use of the Latin language was insensibly abolished,
and the Britons were deprived of the art and learning which Italy
communicated to her Saxon proselytes. In Wales and Armorica, the Celtic
tongue, the native idiom of the West, was preserved and propagated;
and the _Bards_, who had been the companions of the Druids, were still
protected, in the sixteenth century, by the laws of Elizabeth. Their
chief, a respectable officer of the courts of Pengwern, or Aberfraw, or
Caermarthen, accompanied the king's servants to war: the monarchy of the
Britons, which he sung in the front of battle, excited their courage,
and justified their depredations; and the songster claimed for his
legitimate prize the fairest heifer of the spoil. His subordinate
ministers, the masters and disciples of vocal and instrumental music,
visited, in their respective circuits, the royal, the noble, and the
plebeian houses; and the public poverty, almost exhausted by the clergy,
was oppressed by the importunate demands of the bards. Their rank
and merit were ascertained by solemn trials, and the strong belief
of supernatural inspiration exalted the fancy of the poet, and of his
audience. The last retreats of Celtic freedom, the extreme territories
of Gaul and Britain, were less adapted to agriculture than to pasturage:
the wealth of the Britons consisted in their flocks and herds; milk and
flesh were their ordinary food; and bread was sometimes esteemed, or
rejected, as a foreign luxury. Liberty had peopled the mountains of
Wales and the morasses of Armorica; but their populousness has been
ma