mighty Rome had all but crumbled into dust, as if to proclaim that the last work of those all-dreaded conquerors was the civilization of Britain. They divided our island into five provinces, appointed governors and officers to administer justice, and collect taxes in each division. Over all these a chief ruler was placed, who was accountable for his actions to the Roman emperor, and whose written orders were given to him in a green-covered book, emblazoned with golden castles, when he was installed in the dignity of his office--as, in almost all colonies, there were doubtless many who, "clothed in authority," ruled with an iron hand over their fellow-men; not that such always escaped--for, as we have before stated, the revolt of Boadicea was caused by the oppression of Roman rulers, and dreadful was the reckoning of her vengeance. We have already had occasion to remark how easily the Romans broke through the ancient British fortresses, and how frequently the Picts and Scots made inroads through the ramparts erected by the Romans. Saving, however, in such works as appear to have been hastily thrown up by the Britons, when they retreated into their native forests, they displayed considerable skill in the erection of their strongholds. They occasionally constructed high walls, with blocks of granite five or six feet long, and these they piled together without the aid of cement, digging a deep ditch outside, to make access more difficult; and as this fortress was built in the form of a circle, and the wall was of sufficient thickness to permit half a dozen men to walk on it abreast, it must, although not of such extent, have been as difficult to storm as the barriers thrown up by the Romans. The huge stone, supposed to weigh upwards of seven hundred tons, which is placed on the points of two rocks in Cornwall, and the massy blocks raised and piled on each other at Stonehenge, show that, ages before the Roman invasion, Britain was inhabited by a tribe whose knowledge of the power of leverage, and skill in removing such gigantic blocks from the distant quarries, were only surpassed by the builders of the Egyptian Pyramids. No wonder that a race possessed of such natural genius was, under tuition of the Roman architects, enabled to produce such a class of workmen, that a demand was made for them even in Gaul, and that the skill of the British mechanic was in that early age acknowledged on the continent. Industry led to wealth, and the latter to luxuries to which the simple Britons had, before the Roman period, been entire strangers; instead of the cloak of skin, and the dyed sagum, those who dwelt in towns now wore the Roman toga, and the British ladies began to decorate themselves with jewels of gold, silver, and precious stones, instead of their own island pearls, once so celebrated as to cause even a grave historian to attribute the invasion of Julius Cæsar to no other motive than a wish to fill his galley with them.