prefigured the national organization that through centuries of
gradual development became modern England.

Out of their early modes grew the forms of English citizenship and
legislation, and the individual and public freedom which has slowly
broadened down from generation to generation. Later came the
modifying, if not transforming, influence of Christianity,
replacing the ancient nature-worship which they took with them to
their new home. On these foundations the English race, as it has
grown up in the land they made their own, and in other lands to
which like men and institutions have been carried, has reared its
various structures of nationality.

JOHN R. GREEN

Of the three English tribes the Saxons lay nearest to the empire, and
they were naturally the first to touch the Roman world; before the close
of the third century indeed their boats appeared in such force in the
English Channel as to call for a special fleet to resist them. The
piracy of our fathers had thus brought them to the shores of a land
which, dear as it is now to Englishmen, had not as yet been trodden by
English feet. This land was Britain. When the Saxon boats touched its
coast the island was the westernmost province of the Roman Empire. In
the fifty-fifth year before Christ a descent of Julius Caesar revealed it
to the Roman world; and a century after Caesar's landing the emperor
Claudius undertook its conquest. The work was swiftly carried out.
Before thirty years were over the bulk of the island had passed beneath
the Roman sway, and the Roman frontier had been carried to the firths of
Forth and of Clyde. The work of civilization followed fast on the work
of the sword. To the last indeed the distance of the island from the
seat of empire left her less Romanized than any other province of the
west. The bulk of the population scattered over the country seem in
spite of imperial edicts to have clung to their old law as to their old
language, and to have retained some traditional allegiance to their
native chiefs. But Roman civilisation rested mainly on city life, and in
Britain as elsewhere the city was thoroughly Roman. In towns such as
Lincoln or York, governed by their own municipal officers, guarded by
massive walls, and linked together by a network of magnificent roads
which reached from one end of the island to the other, manners,
language, political life, all were of Rome.

For three