LIFE IN BRITAIN IN ROMAN TIMES.

PEARSON'S "6

ENGLAND IN THE EARLY AND MIDDLE AGES."

Life in Britain in Roman times throws much light upon the condition of the island during the time that it was subject to Roman rule. Professor Pearson thinks that the impression made by the Roman occupation was much deeper and more abiding than has been generally supposed, and he adduces many instructive facts in confirmation of his opinion. The Roman conquest of Britain was begun by Julius Cæsar 55 B. C., but was scarcely completed before 78 A. D.

THE life of Roman colonists in Britain was, of course, 1 much the same as that of Romanized citizens elsewhere. They brought into England the manufactures in which they anticipated fourteen hundred years of Germanic civilization-the tinted glass, the Samian potteries, and the sculptured bronze. They were skilled in the tricks of trade. The inscribed boxes of their quack medicines are still disinterred; spurious coin is found in quantities that induce us to regard it as a device of the imperial treasury; and locks, with contrivances in the wards which have been reinvented and patented in the last thirty years, attest alike the art of their thieves and of their smiths. Roman bricks and mortar have furnished inexhaustible materials for Saxon towns, Norman castles, and even for English farmhouses. The great number of the Roman villas whose remains can still be traced is a proof that the lords of the soil were in easy circumstances; while the fact that the structures were commonly of wood, raised upon a brick or stone foundation, is an argument against large fortunes. Probably no rich man would have chosen to spend his life so far from Rome, and under a British sky. Nor can the towns have been 2

magnificent, even in cases like Silchester, where the walls. inclose an area three miles in circuit. The amphitheatres, still known to us, never equal the colossal dimensions of those of Verona or Treves, and only one instance is at present known in which the sides are not apparently of turf. The houses were probably thatched. And, except where the main streets ran, giving passage for horses and troops, the Roman towns were probably grouped in continuous masses of buildings, intersected by narrow alleys like modern Venice. In some sanitary details the civilization of several centuries had told upon the customs of the people. Large sewers, large aqueducts, and 3 extramural interment are common features. At first the bodies of the dead were burned, and their ashes preserved in mortuary urns. In the third and fourth centuries, the Christian belief in the resurrection of the body caused the old Roman practice of interment to be revived. But no kindly superstition was allowed to sanction burial in the crowded thoroughfares of the cities. The dead body, often covered up with lime, was carried out of the gates; and the great highways were lined with tombs, whose inscriptions appealed to the passer-by for sympathy.

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But the traveler in Roman England, who wandered away from the main road or from the cities, would find himself among villages which had known little change since the days of Conobelin. Probably to the last, native chiefs, like Cogidubnus of Chichester, were allowed to retain the shadow of their old royalty, and enjoyed the loyal allegiance of their clans. Between the British gentry and the Roman officials and merchants there would be constant intercourse in the towns, and at last frequent intermarriages. It is just possible that in such a county as Kent, which lay in the line of traffic between Britain and Gaul, the old British tongue died out, and was re

placed by a debased Latin, like that spoken in the towns, and in which inscriptions are found in the western counties. The barbarous Welsh tribes were probably least affected by Roman rule; yet the terms of civilization in Welsh are commonly from a Latin original. But, to ac-5 count for the great admixture of British words in AngloSaxon and in English, we must assume that the natives mostly retained their ancient tongue. The argument is even stronger if we look at literature. The Roman legislation favored schoolmasters, whom the prefect was charged to care especially for, that they might not be burdened with civic offices beyond their ability; and we have an incidental notice of one Briton whose father was said to have been of this profession. It is certain that the Roman authors were read in England; and we still possess a "Juvencus" which was once the property of a young Pictish officer. Yet so rare and superficial was this culture that Britain produced no single poet or rhetorician to rival the Gaul Sidonius or the African Tertullian. Only the name of one obscure epigrammatist has been embalmed for us in the verses of a rival. And 6 when the conquerors disappeared a race of native poets sprang up, whose complicated system of rhymes and alliterations and antithetical couplets presents the most exact contrast conceivable to the stately hexameters of Virgil or the graceful trochaics of Catullus. The laws of Rome, it may be thought, would strike root more easily than the language. They, of course, prevailed in the towns and in the more settled parts of the island. But in the Welsh codes that we possess, whatever be their antiquity, there is no immediate trace of the Pandects; while the Keltic custom of borough-English, by which property devolves to the youngest son, has lasted down to historical times in our own country, and has seemingly

7 been transplanted from England to Brittany. To make a bridge or cast a bell was the great feat of a Welsh saint in the fifth century. The cromlechs, or sepulchral monuments of the Britons, are known, from the trinkets and coins found in them, to have been erected during the period of Roman dominion. More striking evidence could not be wished of the barbarism, or, if a milder term be preferred, of the stubborn nationality, of the tribes in the country districts. They saw around them the marvels of Roman architecture and sculpture-the arch, the statue, and the bass-relief-and they preferred to overshadow the grave with the largest stone they could find in the neighborhood. Three stones, so placed as to bridge a space, are the highest achievement of native sepulchral art.

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To sum up all, then, the occupation of Britain by the Romans was like the French colonization of Algeria, with the differences of a long and a short tenure. The government was military and municipal; the conquerors unsympathetic and hard. But the peace which they enforced favored commerce, and the mines which they developed were prolific in salt, iron, tin, and lead. They burned coal where wood was scanty in the north, and in one instance carried a mine under water. Under Julian (A. D. 358), eight hundred vessels were employed in the corn-trade between the English coasts and the Roman colonies on the Rhine. Before Cæsar's time even the beech and the fir had been unknown in our forests; and the apple, the nut, and the raspberry were probably the chief of our native fruits. The better half of our common trees, from the cherry to the chestnut, are of Roman origin; the vine and the fig-tree were introduced, and maintained themselves; the pea, the radish, and other common vegetables were then added to the garden; and

it is even possible that to Rome we owe the rose, the lily, and the peony. The mule and pigeon followed the track of the legions. Yet a country life was not that to which 9 the colonist generally inclined. He was rather a dweller in towns, a trader, and a builder, and he scattered cities broadcast over the island. The splendor of Roman remains attracted attention in the twelfth century, when the grass was growing over them, and generations had already quarried in them for homes. Above all, those numerous cities had been centers of Roman polity and law. These influences can hardly be overrated, nor can it be doubted that many of them remained, and even gathered strength, where all seemed to be swept away. For good or for evil, England was henceforth a part of the European commonwealth of nations, sharing that commerce for want of which Ireland remained barbarous; sharing the alliances for disregarding which the Saxon dynasty perished; penetrated by ideas which have connected the people in every historical struggle, crusades, and French wars, with the sympathies and hopes of other men.

DOMESTIC LIFE IN THE MIDDLE

AGES.-CON

TRAST BETWEEN THE MIDDLE AGES AND MODERN TIMES.

This description of the Middle Ages, by Professor Pearson, is one of the finest attempts to reproduce that strangely interesting period to be found in the English language. The Middle Ages may be regarded as extending from about the middle of the eleventh century to the end of the fifteenth. The invention of printing (1440 A. D.), the fall