The annual movement of the Sun to the South renders it an indisputable fact, that the Northern climate of England must have made huts or caves indispensibly necessary to the inhabitants, at least five months of each twelve, from the hour that our country was peopled. _Ideas_ are useless on such a subject; _sensation_ is sufficient; and instinct, which compels a brute to seek shelter under ground, or in a hollow tree, from the inclemency of the season, cannot have been so far denied to the Briton as to lead him to other expedients less calculated to answer his purpose. I do not hesitate, therefore, to assert that our Aborigines fortified existence in caverns natural and artificial, and in huts constructed of branches easily separated from trees, and covered or thatched with leaves and dried plants; nay, the piling of flat stones on each other seems an operation so easy and natural, that I cannot conceive why the art should have been imported; indeed, mortar is suggested by wet earth or mud dried on river sides by the air; and who knows but that our mud walls and even mud villages now to be found in numbers North of London may be the traditionary houses of our remotest ancestors[359:A]? After this Island was invaded, the habitations of the various nations which accomplished the invasions were introduced by imitation, and copies of Roman, Saxon, Danish, and Norman houses were doubtlessly common. The Tesselated Pavements and Baths still discovered belong to the first; but their form can only be supposed, I should imagine, from the discoveries at Herculaneum. The Saxons have left us strong and almost eternal proofs of their skill in masonry; but I believe there is little or nothing to be found, the work of their hands, besides Ecclesiastical Buildings and Castles. It is true, the latter were _habitations_, but for the rich and powerful alone; the dwellings of the mass of the community were too frail to reach our days.