much believed in; and as they made and executed the laws and paid nō taxeṣ, nō wonder they liked their trāde; and as they persuaded the people the mōre Druids there were the better off the people would bē, I don't wonder there were so many of them. But it is pleasant to think there are nō Drûidṣ now who gō on in that way.

Fifty-five years befōre our Saviour, Julius Cēṣar, the great Roman general, came across the sea with twelve thousand men; but the bōld Britons fought him bravely, and hē ran great risk of being tōtally defeated. He came next year with thirty thousand men. Caswallon was chosen general of the Britons, and well he and his soldiers fought the Romans; but as other chiefs were jealous of him he propōṣed peace, and Cēṣar was glâd to grant it and gō away. He had expected to find pearls in Britain, and hē may have found a few; but I am sure he found tough Britons, of whom, I dare say, hē māde the same complaint as Napoleon, the great French general, did eighteen hundred years after, when he said they were such unreasonable fellows, they never knew when they were beaten. They never did know, I believe, and never will!

Nearly a hundred years passed on, and there was peace in Britain. The Britons became mōre ċivilized. At last the Romans came again with a mighty force. The Britons would not yield, and the brave Caractacus gave battle among the mountains of North Wales; but lost the day and was carried prisoner to Rome.

The Britons roșe again, under Boadicea, a British queen, but were again vanqüished with greāt slaughter. Still their spirit was not broken. They fought the bloodiest battles with the Roman emperor Agricola, and with succeeding emperors, and then there were intervals of peace.

Then came the Saxons, a fierce sea-faring people from Germany; and for two hundred years they and the Scots and Picts from Ireland and North Britain made repeated attacks, and âll this time the Britons rōse on the Romans, until at last, âll the world being against the Romans, they abandoned the Islands, for their soldiers were wanted at home.

Five hundred years had past since Jūlius Cēṣar's first invasion of the Island, when the Romans depärted from it for ever. They had done much to improve the condition of the Britons; they had made roads and forts, and had refined the whole British way of living. Above all it was in Rōman tīme and bỹ means of Rōman ships that the Christian religion was brought, and the people fîrst taught the greāt lesson that to be good in the sight of God they must love their neighbors as themselves and do unto others as they would be done by.

Little is known of these five hundred years; but some remains are found-rusty money that once belonged to Romans; fragments of plate from which they ate, and goblets they drank from, are still found. in digging. Wells they sunk; roads they made; traces of Rōman camps ōvergrown with grass, and

mounds that are the burial-places of heaps of Britons are to be found in âlmost âll pärts. Across the bleak moors of Northumberland, the great wâll of the Roman emperor Sevērus, ōver-run with moss and weeds, still stretches a strong rûin; and the shepherds and their dogs lie sleeping on it in the summer weather.

29.-HAROLD II.

Harold, son of Earl Godwin, was crowned King of England on the very day of the maudlin Confessor's funeral. He had good need to be quick about it. When the news reached Norman William, hunting in his pärk at Roûten, he dropped his bow, returned to his palace, câlled his nobles to council, and presently sent ambassadors to Harold, câlling on him to keep his oath to reṣīgn the Crown. Harold woüld do no such thing, and so the barons of France leagued together round Duke William for the invaŝion of England. Duke William promised freely to distribute English wealth and English lands among them.

King Harold had a rebel brother in Fländers, who was a vassal of Harold Hardräda, King of Norway. This brother, and this Norwegian king, joining their fōrces against England, with Duke William's help, won a fight, in which the English were commanded by two nōbles, and then besiēģed York. Harold, who was waiting for the Normans on the coast at

Hastings, with his ärmy, märched to Stamford Bridge, upon the river Derwent, to give them instant battle.

He found them drawn up in a hollow cîrcle, märked out by their shining spears. Riding round this cîrcle at a distance, to survey it, he saw a brave figure on horseback, in a blue mantle and a bright helmet, whose horse suddenly stumbled and threw him.

"Who is that man who has fallen?" Harold asked of one of his captains.

The King of Norway," he replied.

“Hē iș a tâll and stately king," said Harold, "but his end is near."

He added, in a little while, "Gō yonder to my brother, and tell him if he withdraw his troops hē shall be Earl of Northumberland, and rich and pow-erful in England."

The captain rōde away and gave the message.

“What will hẽ give to my friend the King of Norway?" asked the brother.

"Seven feet of earth for a grave," replied the captain.

"Nō mōre?" returned the brother, with a smile. "The King of Norway being a tâll man, perhaps a little more," replied the captain.

"Ride back," said the brother, "and tell King Harold to make ready for the fight !"

He did so, very soon. And such a fight King Harold led against that force, that his brother, and the Norwegian King, and every chief of nōte in âll their host, except the Norwegian King's son, Olave,

to whom he gave honorable dismissal, were left dead upon the field. The victorious ärmy märched to York. As King Harold sat there at the feast, in the midst of all his company, a stîr was heard at the dōors; and messengers âll covered with mire, from riding fär and fast through brōken ground, cāme hurrying in, to report that the Normans had landed in England.

The intelligence was true. They had been tossed about by contrary winds, and some of their ships had been wrecked. A part of their own shōre, to which they had been driven back, was strewn with Norman bodies. But they had once mōre māde sail, led by the Duke's own galley, a present from his wife, upon the prow whereof the figure of a golden boy stood pointing towards England. By day, the banner of the three Lions of Normandy, the diverse colored sails, the gilded vanes, the many decorations of this gorgeous ship, had glittered in the sun and sunny wâter; by night, a light had spärkled like a stär at her mast-head. And now, encamped near Hastings, with their leader lying in the ōld Rōman castle of Pevensey, the English retiring in âll directions, the land for miles around scorched and smoking, fired and pillaged, was the whole Norman pow-er, hopeful and strong, on English ground.

Harold broke up the feast and hurried to London. Within a week, his ärmy was ready. He sent out spies to ascertain the Norman strength. William took them, caused them to be led through his whole