ord only a dark and
bloody prospect of intestine discord.

A monk, who, in the profound ignorance of human life, has presumed to
exercise the office of historian, strangely disfigures the state of
Britain at the time of its separation from the Western empire. Gildas
describes in florid language the improvements of agriculture, the
foreign trade which flowed with every tide into the Thames and the
Severn the solid and lofty construction of public and private edifices;
he accuses the sinful luxury of the British people; of a people,
according to the same writer, ignorant of the most simple arts, and
incapable, without the aid of the Romans, of providing walls of stone,
or weapons of iron, for the defence of their native land. Under the long
dominion of the emperors, Britain had been insensibly moulded into the
elegant and servile form of a Roman province, whose safety was intrusted
to a foreign power. The subjects of Honorius contemplated their new
freedom with surprise and terror; they were left destitute of any civil
or military constitution; and their uncertain rulers wanted either
skill, or courage, or authority, to direct the public force against the
common enemy. The introduction of the Saxons betrayed their internal
weakness, and degraded the character both of the prince and people.
Their consternation magnified the danger; the want of union diminished
their resources; and the madness of civil factions was more solicitous
to accuse, than to remedy, the evils, which they imputed to the
misconduct of their adversaries. Yet the Britons were not ignorant,
they could not be ignorant, of the manufacture or the use of arms; the
successive and disorderly attacks of the Saxons allowed them to recover
from their amazement, and the prosperous or adverse events of the war
added discipline and experience to their native valor.

While the continent of Europe and Africa yielded, without resistance,
to the Barbarians, the British island, alone and unaided, maintained
a long, a vigorous, though an unsuccessful, struggle, against the
formidable pirates, who, almost at the same instant, assaulted the
Northern, the Eastern, and the Southern coasts. The cities which had
been fortified with skill, were defended with resolution; the advantages
of ground, hills, forests, and morasses, were diligently improved by the
inhabitants; the conquest of each district was purchased with blood; and
the defeats of the Saxons are strongly attested by