common grammar. The home of this mother-tribe is a matter of conjecture; until recently it was supposed to have been the high table-land of Eastern Persia. Modern surmise, mostly German, places it in Europe-in Germany, in Scandinavia, in Russia just north of the Black Sea. When and in what order the migrations from the old homestead took place is equally conjectural; but that great migrations did occur, each migrating horde carrying along with it the parent speech, is no longer doubted.

III. The Celts. Of this people a word is needed as preface to our historical sketch. The Celts occupied the Spanish Peninsula, Gaul when Cæsar subdued it, and Britain when he visited it 55 and 54 B.C. The Celts in Britain were at this time broken into many tribes, seldom uniting in a common cause. They lived in houses hollowed out of the hills, built with low stone walls, thatched with reeds and straw, and lighted only by the door. Their dress was the tunic and short trousers; their food, fruits, milk, flesh, and grain bruised and baked; their arts, such as the possession of earthen ware, and of war chariots, arrows, the sword, the spear, the battle-axe, and the small shield implies. They burned or buried their dead, practised tattooing, and were largely ruled by their priests, the druids, who monopolized the learning, arrogated to themselves all authority, paid no taxes, were exempt from all public duties, and settled all disputes, civil and criminal.

IV. The Roman Occupation of the Island.-The Celts made no stout resistance to the Romans, who under Agricola had by 84 A.D. conquered as far north as the Firth of Forth, which they joined to the river Clyde by the wall of Antoninus. They subsequently built, as additional protection against the Picts, the famous wall of Severus, or Hadrian's

wall, uniting the Solway and the Tyne. The Romans did not attempt a thorough conquest of Britain; but, with their headquarters at Eboracum, now York, held the island by a series of fortified posts, whose site is now mainly indicated by towns with names ending in chester, cester or caster -forms of the Latin castra, a camp. These posts the Romans connected by broad and straight military roads over which their legions could rapidly march.

The Romans levied taxes on arable land, on pasture land, and on fruits, and exacted customs at the ports. They fostered agriculture, and exported grain to Rome. But the imperial city whose empire stretched so far, whose armies were largely composed of soldiers drafted from her subject peoples and led by generals of their own blood, was menaced by invading hordes, and was forced to recall her legions for her own defence. By 420 the soldiers had all left Britain, never to return, and the Celts were again free. But their freedom was of short duration. By the middle of the fifth century a more formidable invasion than the Roman had taken place, and a more thorough conquest was begun by

V. The Angles, the Saxons, and the Jutes.-These peoples from Schleswig, Holstein, and Jutland, provinces about the mouths of the Elbe and north of them, were of the Low German branch of the Teutonic stock. They had blue eyes and flaxen hair, were large of frame, huge feeders, and most "potent in potting." They were fond of adventure on land and on sea, and were fierce and cruel in battle. They were owners and tillers of the soil, hated cities, knew no king, and lived each group of related families within its mark, or district, which was bounded by a belt of neutral land from other "farmer commonwealths." Among

them there was a sprinkling of eorls, earls, who were men of nobler birth, but enjoyed no superior legal rights. The homesteads of each mark clustered around the moot-hill, where the whole community met to administer justice, and the wise men to settle questions of peace and war and to frame laws. Their religion was pagan; each mark had its fane, or church, and every man was the priest of his own household. Their gods, Tiw, Woden, Thor, and Frea, have given names to all but three of the days of our week. Our Old Nick, Old Scratch, weird, Easter, and hell can be traced to other, though minor, deities of theirs.

On the withdrawal of the Roman legions from Britain, the unsubdued Picts and Scots of the north attacked the Celts of the south, who had been Roman subjects. Whether the assailed Britons detached the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes from an alliance with the Picts and Scots, and turned them against their former allies; whether, without having been in alliance, these foreigners came by invitation across the North Sea to help beat back these Picts and Scots; or whether, lured by the fertile soil, they came uninvited, and on their own account, we may never know; but it is certain that they came, and that they came to stay. Their coming is of immense significance, for they became the basis of the English nation, and their speech the mothertongue of the English language.

The Jutes, we are told by the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, came over under Hengist and Horsa in 449, and settled in Kent. Ella and his followers, in 477, and Cerdic with his, in 495, settled Sussex in the south and Wessex in the west, and later Saxons founded Essex. The ending sex would of itself suggest the origin of these kingdoms. Three kingdoms north of Thames-the largest of which,

Northumbria, stretched from the Humber to the Forthwere founded by the Angles. Besides this, East Anglia and Mercia were established.

The conquest of the Celts by these Low German invaders that of a Christian people by a pagan, it may be noticed-proceeded slowly, and in 520 came to a halt which lasted fifty years. It was then resumed, and by 607 the unexterminated Britons had taken refuge in the western part of the island. And now for more than two hundred years the conquerors waged fierce war upon one another. The seven kingdoms, for war begat the king, contended for the overlordship, till in 827 Wessex secured it, the Heptarchy became a Monarchy, and Egbert ruled from the English Channel to the Firth of Forth.

Meanwhile the invaders had been Christianized, Augustine and his missionaries arriving from Rome in 597. The Christian temple rose on the site of the pagan fane. By the end of the seventh century, the Church was a single organization in spite of the division of the island into warring kingdoms. As population increased, the marks coalesced and became shires, of which in Alfred's time there were thirty-two, each with its organization, religious, legal, and political.

VI. The Danish Conquest.-The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle relates that in 787 the Danes, as all Northmen, or Scandinavians, at this time were called, began their invasions. Sweeping up the great rivers that pour their waters into the North Sea, they laid waste the territory adjacent, harried and killed the inhabitants, and settled as they conquered. The very verb harry is Anglo-Saxon, derived from their name for the dreaded Danish army-here. What terror this army inspired may be gathered from the

fact that this prayer made its way into the Anglo-Saxon litany: "From the incursions of the Northmen, good Lord, deliver us."

These Scandinavians were beaten in great battles, and driven back only to return. They were bought off with gold; and finally, on condition that they would confine themselves within it, they were given the territory to the east and north-east of Watling Street, an old Roman military road, which stretched from near Dover through London to Chester on the Dee. But they could not be kept within the limits of this territory, called the Danelagh, and at last succeeded in placing four kings in succession on the throne-Sweyn, Canute, Harold Harefoot, and Hardicanute, 1013-1042.

VII. The Languages Spoken on the Island.-The unconquered Celts, or Kelts, of the west and north spoke their own tongue, of course, the Celtic, or Keltic. That of the conquered portion was overwhelmingly the language of the conquerors, and was called the Anglo-Saxon. But it was not quite pure; some few Celtic words had entered it. The Celtic names for the rivers, lakes, hills, and mountains clung fast to these objects, and are found in English

even now.

Isaac Taylor in Words and Places says, "Throughout the whole of England there is hardly a single river-name which is not Celtic." Avon, Celtic for water, is the name of fourteen English rivers to-day. Esk, meaning the same thing, designates more than twenty. It has entered into the names of towns also, as in Exeter, Axminster, Oxford, and Uxbridge. Thames, Humber, Wye, Cam, Ouse, and many other river-names are Celtic. Pen or Ben, the usual Celtic name for a mountain, is seen in the name for the range