still they resisted him. SEVERUS came, nearly a hundred
years afterwards, and they worried his great army like dogs, and rejoiced
to see them die, by thousands, in the bogs and swamps. CARACALLA, the
son and successor of SEVERUS, did the most to conquer them, for a time;
but not by force of arms. He knew how little that would do. He yielded
up a quantity of land to the Caledonians, and gave the Britons the same
privileges as the Romans possessed. There was peace, after this, for
seventy years.

Then new enemies arose. They were the Saxons, a fierce, sea-faring
people from the countries to the North of the Rhine, the great river of
Germany on the banks of which the best grapes grow to make the German
wine. They began to come, in pirate ships, to the sea-coast of Gaul and
Britain, and to plunder them. They were repulsed by CARAUSIUS, a native
either of Belgium or of Britain, who was appointed by the Romans to the
command, and under whom the Britons first began to fight upon the sea.
But, after this time, they renewed their ravages. A few years more, and
the Scots (which was then the name for the people of Ireland), and the
Picts, a northern people, began to make frequent plundering incursions
into the South of Britain. All these attacks were repeated, at
intervals, during two hundred years, and through a long succession of
Roman Emperors and chiefs; during all which length of time, the Britons
rose against the Romans, over and over again. At last, in the days of
the Roman HONORIUS, when the Roman power all over the world was fast
declining, and when Rome wanted all her soldiers at home, the Romans
abandoned all hope of conquering Britain, and went away. And still, at
last, as at first, the Britons rose against them, in their old brave
manner; for, a very little while before, they had turned away the Roman
magistrates, and declared themselves an independent people.

Five hundred years had passed, since Julius Caesar's first invasion of
the Island, when the Romans departed from it for ever. In the course of
that time, although they had been the cause of terrible fighting and
bloodshed, they had done much to improve the condition of the Britons.
They had made great military roads; they had built forts; they had taught
them how to dress, and arm themselves, much better than they had ever
known how to do before; they had refined the whole British way of living.
AGRICOLA had built a great wall of earth, more than