on the hillsides, and villages peacefully lying round the venerable churches which sanctify the country; seeing every part of this lovely country like a garden, enclosed by hedges, planted with trees, under care and cultivation, save here and there an expanse of moorland, of heath, or of barren mountain; seeing the whole land traversed in every direction by high-roads, cross-country roads, railways, and canals;-we do well to ask how the country became so cultivated and so cared for; how long it has been the great and beautiful garden which we now look upon. On investigation, we discover that the present aspect of the land is not two centuries old, and that even in the time of the Stuarts the country presented an appearance and was subject to conditions such that, could we see it as it was then, we should hardly be able to recognize it as we see it now. This appearance, and these conditions, continued and preserved those of a thousand years. Between the England of the . ninth century (with which we are here concerned) and that of the seventeenth, there was very little change, except that in the former period the forests covered a larger area, the marshes were more dangerous and more extensive, the villages and towns were more scattered, separate, and isolated.

Lay before you a map of England. Carry yourself back to the ninth century. With a brush and some water-colour lay down upon the map the forests, the marshes, the seaboard, the moors, the divisions, provinces, or kingdoms of the country. You will find, first of all, a vast

forest beginning with the coast of Kent, where a narrow strip had been cleared, and stretching westward across the country covering a great part of Kent, Surrey, Sussex, Hampshire, and Dorsetshire. This forest, on reaching the borders of the modern Devonshire, turned north, lay all round Sedgemoor, and covered the greater part of Somerset. On the north of the Thames the Middlesex and Essex forest covered nearly the whole of the former and a large part of the latter, with branches over Willesden and Harrow, and so westward. The middle part of the country, including the shires of Warwick, Worcester, Gloucester, Cheshire, Nottingham, and Derby, was covered by an enormous forest; and Yorkshire, Durham, and Northumberland, save for a broad belt of cultivated land, were also under forest. Moors, again, large and barren, undrained bog and quagmire, lay around and amid the forest-Exmoor, Dartmoor, the Yorkshire moors, the moor of the Peak, Beaulieu Moor, the moors of Middlesex forest, and the Midland moors, of which you may to-day find an example outside the town of Tewkesbury. Of marshland there was also plenty. Along the south coast lay the lagoons of Poole, Christchurch, Southampton, Portsmouth, and Langston, bright and sparkling water at high tide, mud at low; the marshes spread out north and south of the river Thames; and all round the Essex coast; the Fenland, with its hundred miles of marsh and swamp, over which at high tide the waters of the Wash flowed unrestrained, covered a vast area; and another huge marsh at the end of

the Humber estuary, into which a dozen rivers flowed, contributing their own sluggish waters to swell every flow of the tide.

The old Roman roads were too well and strongly made to be wholly ruined by neglect. They survive to the present day, hard, compact, and serviceable, but in places they were broken through, perhaps intentionally to stop the advance of an enemy, and they were nowhere repaired. There was no reason why they should have been repaired, for the towns which they had formerly connected now lay in ruins, and in their stead villages, founded originally for and by a family or a small tribe, were planted on the banks of the rivers and in the midst of the forests. Some connection with the outer world, some intercommunication was necessary, even for the simple village life. The folk wanted metal for weapons and for agricultural implements; they wanted salt for the daily life. Iron and salt were the two chief instruments of keeping open communication, and therefore rendering civilization, joint action, a sense of kinship, possible among these isolated settlements.

The Saxons disliked cities and walled places. It was their desire, following the memory of ancient times upon the Elbe and the Weser, as soon as some kind of peace was established, to settle down upon these clearings in their homesteads, with the central hall, the cottages of the kin, the slaves, and the cattle, and to live out their lives in quiet. Your map of Saxon England, if you examine it more curiously, will be found remarkable for the very small number

of towns upon it. Settlements and tribes or families there were in plenty, but few towns. This love of the Saxon for solitary freedom in their farms and clearings should be remembered in reading their history; it was a factor of the highest importance in their wars with the Danes, because it prevented that coalition of the whole people which would have driven out the invaders easily and speedily, and with such loss that they would have come no more.

Tribal and family settlements, however, are not enough to ensure peace and security: there must be common action, and therefore a leader and a council. Not long, therefore, after their settlement in the country, the people found themselves grouping into small and separate nations. Thus the Angles, who first settled in East Anglia-Norfolk and Suffolk-formed one kingdom; another branch of the same tribe crossed the Fenland, conquered the middle of England, and became another kingdom-that of Mercia; the Jutes, who settled in Kent, created a kingdom of their own; the East Saxons, South Saxons, and West Saxons formed respectively the kingdoms of Essex, Sussex, and Wessex; while in the north, two kingdoms were formed, of Bernicia and Deira, afterwards merged into one-that of Northumbria. The conquest of the country, moreover, was never complete. The power of the Britons, it is true, was broken; but many of them remained where they had taken shelter, in the forests. It pleases the antiquary to discover at this day in Sussex the descendants of those Britons who fled, whither the enemy could not