[11] It may, however, be new to some of our readers to be informed that Owen Glendower's Oak, whence that Welsh chieftain is said to have witnessed the discomfiture of his English allies at the Battle of Shrewsbury in 1403, still stands at Shelton, in a garden on the right of the road from Shrewsbury to Oswestry, where the Welsh army lay. [12] See the _Guide to the Ruins of Uriconium_ (Third Edition, 1860), by Thomas Wright, Esq. M. A., F.S.A., the accomplished archæologist, who, by his unwearied exertions, has so efficiently contributed to the exploration of these remains. [13] Palgrave's _Hist. of England_, Anglo-Saxon Period. 1834. [14] Senior's _Lectures on Political Economy_. DOMESTIC LIFE OF THE SAXONS. The infant state of our Saxon ancestors when the Romans first observed them, exhibited nothing from which human sagacity could have predicted greatness. A territory on the neck of the Cimbric Chersonesus, and three small islands, contained those whose descendants occupy the circle of Westphalia, the Electorate of Saxony, the British Islands, the United States of North America, and the British Colonies in the two Indies. Such is the course of Providence, that empires, the most extended and the most formidable, are found to vanish as the morning mist; while tribes, scarcely visible, or contemptuously overlooked, like the springs of a mighty river, often glide on gradually to greatness and veneration. Our inquiry, however, must be confined to the arts of these people. Concerning their architecture, it is supposed that the most ancient buildings were of wood; since the Saxon verb _Getymbrian_, to build, signifies literally to make of timber. The early English churches were built of logs of wood; and the erection of buildings of reeds and trunks of trees seems to have existed in some parts of England to a late period; since, in 940, Hoel Dha, King of North Wales, erected his White House, where his famous laws were made, of twisted branches, with the bark stripped and left white, whence it derived its name. Even in the days of Henry I. also, Pembroke Castle was built of twigs and turf. Bricks were made in England by the Saxons; but they were thin, and were called wall-tiles. It has been supposed that the Saxons and Normans adopted the masonry which the Romans introduced into England, altering it as architecture improved. The principal peculiarities of the Saxon style are the want of uniformity in all its parts, massive columns, semicircular arches, and diagonal mouldings. The first two are common to the barbaric architecture of Europe; the round arches are believed to have been taken from the Romans; and the zig-zag mouldings have been thought to allude to the stringing of the teeth of fishes. According to the best authorities, there are very few specimens of architecture now in existence in this country which can properly be called Saxon,--that is, of date anterior to the Conquest, and not of Roman origin; and these