Europe had her dark ages when there was a night with “darkness visible,” and there was an earlier period in the history of each nation when Man was not less savage than now in the very heart of Africa; but the European has emerged, and at last stands in a world of light. Take any of the nations whose development belongs to modern times, and the original degradation can be exhibited in authentic colors. There is England, whose present civilization is in many respects so finished; but when the conquering Cæsar, only fifty-five years before the birth of Christ, landed on this unknown island, her people were painted savages, with a cruel religion, and a conjugal system which was an incestuous concubinage.[151] His authentic report places this condition beyond question; and thus knowing her original degradation and her present transformation after eighteen centuries, we have the terms for a question in the Rule of Three. Given the original degradation and present transformation of England, how long will it take for the degradation of other lands to experience a similar transformation? Add also present agencies of civilization, to which England was for centuries a stranger. This instance is so important as to justify details. When Britain was first revealed to the commercial enterprise of Tyre, her people, according to Macaulay, “were little superior to the natives of the Sandwich Islands.”[152] The historian must mean, when those islands were first discovered by Captain Cook. Prichard, our best authority, supposes them “nearly on a level with the New-Zealanders or Tahitians of the present day, or perhaps not very superior to the Australians,”[153] which is very low indeed. There was but little change, if any, when they became known to the Romans. They are pictured as large and tall, excelling the Gauls in stature, but less robust, and, according to the geographer Strabo, with crooked legs and unshapely figures.[154] Northward were the Caledonians,--also Britons,--tattooing their bodies, dwelling in tents, savage in manners, and with a moral degradation kindred to that of the Southern Britons.[155] Across the Channel were the Irish, whose reported condition was even more terrible.[156] According to Cæsar, most in the interior of Britain never sowed corn, but lived on milk and flesh, and were clad in skins; but he notes that all colored their bodies with a cerulean dye, “making them more horrid to the sight in battle”; and he then relates, that societies of ten or twelve, brothers and brothers, parents and children, had wives in common.[157] Their religious observances were such as became this savage life. Here was the sanctuary of the Druids, whose absolute and peculiar power was sustained by inhuman rites. On rude, but terrible altars, in the gloom of the forest, human victims were sacrificed,--while from the blood, as it coursed under the knife of the priest, there was a divination of future events.[158] There was no industry, and