When Julius Cæsar, and also when Claudius, nearly a century later, came to Britain it was inhabited by a people from whom it had its name, the Brythons. It is believed that they were not the original inhabitants of the island, but that they had come from some part of that great nursery of the human family, the east of Germany and Poland and the west and south of Russia. There had been at least two great westward migrations of an ancient race called Celts from that nursery, before the time of the Romans coming to Britain. All over the western world and as far south as Byzantium itself these Celts penetrated, and, coming from the east, it is noticeable that they maintained themselves against later invaders most strongly in {4} the farthest west--in Spain, in Brittany, in Cornwall, Wales, Ireland and the West of Scotland. [Sidenote: The Brythons] The earlier immigration of Celts into Britain had taken place in what is called the Bronze Age, when man had learnt to make weapons and tools and ornaments of bronze, but had not yet learnt the use of iron. These Bronze Age Celts were called Goidels. But the people after whom the island was named, the Brythons, came in the Iron Age; and it was them that Cæsar and all the later-coming Romans found in possession. So much has been written about the ancient Britons dyeing themselves blue with "woad" and so on that we are inclined to regard them as far more rude and savage than they were. They seem to have lived in huts made of stone and turf and partly excavated in the ground and to have been hunters, and, in a very simple way, farmers. Some of their houses were built on oak piles driven into the soft ground of the marshes. They lived in small communities, or tribes, often fighting against each other, and with a head-man over each tribe. But besides these communities scattered over the country, there had already been established towns where markets, for buying and selling, were held. This, at all events, would be a tolerably correct picture of the south and east of Britain, where there was a close connection, across the narrow Channel, with Gaul and the Roman influences. Cæsar's Romans found the Brythons buying and selling with gold coins and iron bars serving them for money. I say that this is a tolerably true picture of the south and east, particularly because it is in those parts that an invader, whether he came for peaceful trading or for warlike aggression, would find it the most easy to establish himself. If we look for a moment at the geography of our country we shall see that this must have been so. {5}