and the first that was flung away. No magnificent remains of Latin
porches and aqueducts are to be found in Britain. No writer of British
birth is reckoned among the masters of Latin poetry and eloquence. It is
not probable that the islanders were at any time generally familiar with
the tongue of their Italian rulers. From the Atlantic to the vicinity
of the Rhine the Latin has, during many centuries, been predominant. It
drove out the Celtic; it was not driven out by the Teutonic; and it is
at this day the basis of the French, Spanish and Portuguese languages.
In our island the Latin appears never to have superseded the old Gaelic
speech, and could not stand its ground against the German.

The scanty and superficial civilisation which the Britons had derived
from their southern masters was effaced by the calamities of the fifth
century. In the continental kingdoms into which the Roman empire was
then dissolved, the conquerors learned much from the conquered race. In
Britain the conquered race became as barbarous as the conquerors.

All the chiefs who founded Teutonic dynasties in the continental
provinces of the Roman empire, Alaric, Theodoric, Clovis, Alboin, were
zealous Christians. The followers of Ida and Cerdic, on the other hand,
brought to their settlements in Britain all the superstitions of the
Elbe. While the German princes who reigned at Paris, Toledo, Arles, and
Ravenna listened with reverence to the instructions of bishops, adored
the relics of martyrs, and took part eagerly in disputes touching the
Nicene theology, the rulers of Wessex and Mercia were still performing
savage rites in the temples of Thor and Woden.

The continental kingdoms which had risen on the ruins of the Western
Empire kept up some intercourse with those eastern provinces where the
ancient civilisation, though slowly fading away under the influence of
misgovernment, might still astonish and instruct barbarians, where the
court still exhibited the splendour of Diocletian and Constantine,
where the public buildings were still adorned with the sculptures of
Polycletus and the paintings of Apelles, and where laborious pedants,
themselves destitute of taste, sense, and spirit, could still read and
interpret the masterpieces of Sophocles, of Demosthenes, and of Plato.
From this communion Britain was cut off. Her shores were, to the
polished race which dwelt by the Bosphorus, objects of a mysterious
horror, such as that with which the Ionia