isions. This favorable reception encouraged five
thousand warriors to embark with their families in seventeen vessels,
and the infant power of Hengist was fortified by this strong and
seasonable reenforcement. The crafty Barbarian suggested to Vortigern
the obvious advantage of fixing, in the neighborhood of the Picts,
a colony of faithful allies: a third fleet of forty ships, under the
command of his son and nephew, sailed from Germany, ravaged the Orkneys,
and disembarked a new army on the coast of Northumberland, or Lothian,
at the opposite extremity of the devoted land. It was easy to foresee,
but it was impossible to prevent, the impending evils. The two nations
were soon divided and exasperated by mutual jealousies. The Saxons
magnified all that they had done and suffered in the cause of an
ungrateful people; while the Britons regretted the liberal rewards which
could not satisfy the avarice of those haughty mercenaries. The causes
of fear and hatred were inflamed into an irreconcilable quarrel. The
Saxons flew to arms; and if they perpetrated a treacherous massacre
during the security of a feast, they destroyed the reciprocal confidence
which sustains the intercourse of peace and war. [129]

[Footnote 128: This invitation, which may derive some countenance from
the loose expressions of Gildas and Bede, is framed into a regular story
by Witikind, a Saxon monk of the tenth century, (see Cousin, Hist. de
l'Empire d'Occident, tom. ii. p. 356.) Rapin, and even Hume, have too
freely used this suspicious evidence, without regarding the precise and
probable testimony of Tennius: Iterea venerunt tres Chinlae a exilio
pulsoe, in quibus erant Hors et Hengist.]

[Footnote 129: Nennius imputes to the Saxons the murder of three hundred
British chiefs; a crime not unsuitable to their savage manners. But we
are not obliged to believe (see Jeffrey of Monmouth, l. viii. c.
9-12) that Stonehenge is their monument, which the giants had formerly
transported from Africa to Ireland, and which was removed to Britain by
the order of Ambrosius, and the art of Merlin. * Note: Sir f. Palgrave
(Hist. of England, p. 36) is inclined to resolve the whole of these
stories, as Niebuhr the older Roman history, into poetry. To the editor
they appeared, in early youth, so essentially poetic, as to justify the
rash attempt to embody them in an Epic Poem, called Samor, commenced
at Eton, and finished before he had arrived at the maturer taste of
manh