for the British charioteers. The Romans
undoubtedly conquered the country—finding the
conquest not at all an easy one—and held it
with varying fortune, for four hundred and
sixty-five years. During all this time they made
no attempt to exterminate or seriously oppress
the people, as the Americans have done with
the Red Indians within the last three centuries,
there being no antipathy of race between tin
conquerors and the conquered, such as is found
between white men and negroes, and the
aborigines of America. Australia, and New Zealand.

On the departure of the Romans, the Britons
were not only a numerous, but a highly civilised
people —as civilisation was considered in that
age—and powerful enough, if they could only
have managed to agree among themselves, to
assert and maintain their independence. But
they did not agree; and the result was that
they fell a prey to the Saxon invaders, whom
one of their princes foolishly invited to take part
in their internal commotions. All this is well
known. But here a question arises to which the
answer is not so clear. Did the Saxons, and
after them the Danes, gain such a mastery over
the aboriginal Britons as to exterminate the
greater portion of them, and drive the small
remainder into the mountain fastnesses of Wales.
to he remote extremities of Cornwall, and across
the Forth to the other side of the then formidable
Grampians, that not even the Romans had
ventured to cross in their career of conquest?
The answer to this question has hitherto been in
the affirmative. The ancient historians, and
after them the modern school histories, have
agreed in accepting this view of the case, and
while admitting the English to be a mixed race—
more mixed perhaps than any other European
people—they have uniformly insisted that
at the time of the conquest of England by the
Normans, the English people were Anglo-
Saxons, with a slight admixture of Danes and
other Scandinavians, and that the Cymri, and
Celts, were nowhere to be found within the
limits of the now United Kingdom, except in
Cornwall, Wales, the Isle of Man, Ireland, and
the Highlands of Scotland. Dr. Nicholas asserts
that this historical statement is untrue, and not
only untrue but incredible, that the great
majority of the English people at the time of the
Conquest were Celts; that the Norman invaders
were themselves Celts—recruited to a great
extent in Armorica, now called Britany—and
that this invasion, as far as numbers went, was
a consequent augmentation of the Celtic element
in what is now the great and conquering British
race: a race that happily, at an early period of
its history, adopted the Saxon, or Anglo-Saxon
language, in all parts of the island where the
Celts did not keep wholly aloof from the
invaders, as in Wales, the Isle of Man, and the
mountains of Scotland.

The first and only original authority for the
commonly received statement, which Dr.
Nicholas undertakes to refute, is Gildas. Who
was Gildas? He was monk, born in England
in or about the year 514. His name or
designation implies that he was a Celt, and is derived
apparently from gille or gil, a child, and daorsa,
captivity or bondage. He went to Armorica,
or Britany, in 550, and at some time during
the ten subsequent years wrote his book called
De Excidio Britanniae, in which he told the
melancholy story of the degeneracy, conquest,
flight, and extermination of the Ancient Britons.
He declares that the Britons, reduced to a
"wretched remnant," sent their "groans" to
the Roman Consul Aëtius, imploring his aid
against the Scots and Picts (who, it should be
remembered, were Celts as well as they), stating
"that the barbarians drove them to the sea,
and that the sea drove them back to the
barbarians; that these two modes of death awaited
them; that they were either slain or drowned."
He adds, "that the Romans, affording them no
aid, their councillors agreed with that proud
tyrant Furthrigern (Vortigern) to invite the
fierce and impious Saxons— a race hateful to
God and man. Nothing was ever so pernicious
to our country... A multitude of whelps
came forth from the lair of the barbaric lioness.
They first landed on the east shore of the island,
and there fixed their sharp talons. . . Some
of the miserable remnant (of the Britons), being
taken in the mountains, were murdered in great
numbers; others, constrained by famine, came
and yielded themselves to be slaves for ever to
their foes; others passed beyond the seas with
loud lamentations." This very melancholy story
was copied from Gildas a century afterwards, by
the venerable Bede, and three centuries after-
wards by Nennius, and thence found its way,
unquestioned, into the ordinary histories of
England. Dr. Nicholas expresses the greatest
contempt for Gildas as an authority—asserts
that there were three or four persons of the
name, and that he cannot distinguish which
was which; but allowing, for the sake of
argument, that he was an authentic person, and the
author of the Excidium, he asks how far he is
to be considered an adequate authority for the
statements he makes? By no means mistrusting
his own judgment in the matter, he nevertheless,
like a prudent man, supports his conclusions
by those of other writers, and notably
by those of Gibbon, and of Mr. Thomas Duffus
Hardy, the highest living authority on the
subject of early English history. Gibbon, speaking
of Gildas, describes him as a monk, who, in
profound ignorance of human life, had presumed
to exercise the office of historian, and had
strangely disfigured the state of Britain at the
time of its separation from the Roman Empire.
.Mr. Hardy proclaims the narrative of Gildas to
be "meagre," and "involved in a multitude of
words;" says that he lias but an "indistinct
acquaintance" with the events he describes: that
"he is confused and declamatory; that his statements,
except in very few instances, cannot be
traced to any known source; and that when he
comes to his own time he is, if possible, more
obscure than when he discusses bygone ages.
As regards his authorities, Gildas himself confesses
"that he wrote more from foreign relations,
than from written evidences pertaining
to his own country."