s of Caledonia,
reduced every state to subjection in the southern part of the island,
and chased before him all the men of fiercer and more intractable
spirits, who deemed war and death itself less intolerable than
servitude under the victors. He even defeated them in a decisive
action, which they fought under Galgacus, their leader; and having
fixed a chain of garrisons between the firths of Clyde and Forth, he
thereby cut off the ruder and more barren parts of the island, and
secured the Roman province from the incursions of the barbarous
inhabitants [n].
[FN [n] Tacit Agr.]

During these military enterprises, he neglected not the arts of peace.
He introduced laws and civility among the Britons, taught them to
desire and raise all the conveniences of life, reconciled them to the
Roman language and manners, instructed them in letters and science,
and employed every expedient to render those chains which he had
forged both easy and agreeable to them [o]. The inhabitants, having
experienced how unequal their own force was to resist that of the
Romans, acquiesced in the dominion of their masters, and were
gradually incorporated as a part of that mighty empire.
[FN [o] Ibid.]

This was the last durable conquest made by the Romans; and Britain,
once subdued, gave no farther inquietude to the victor. Caledonia
alone, defended by its barren mountains, and by the contempt which the
Romans entertained for it, sometimes infested the more cultivated
parts of the island by the incursions of its inhabitants. The better
to secure the frontiers of the empire, Adrian, who visited this
island, built a rampart between the river Tyne and the firth of
Solway: Lollius Urbicus, under Antoninus Pius, erected one in the
place where Agricola had formerly established his garrisons: Severus,
who made an expedition into Britain, and carried his arms to the more
northern extremity of it, added new fortifications to the walls of
Adrian; and, during the reigns of all the Roman emperors, such a
profound tranquillity prevailed in Britain, that little mention is
made of the affairs of that island by any historian. The only
incidents which occur are some seditions or rebellions of the Roman
legions quartered there, and some usurpations of the Imperial dignity
by the Roman governors. The natives, disarmed, dispirited, and
submissive, had lost all desire, and even idea of their former liberty
and independence.

But the period was now come when