A weightier argument than that of language has been based on the history of religion. Little importance, indeed, can be attached to the fact that in Gaul there was no break in the episcopate or in the diocesan system, while in England both needed to be re-established by Augustine and Theodore. For even if the diocesan system had existed in Britain before the English invasion--which is doubtful[35]--it would disappear with the destruction of the governing classes. It is a more important consideration that if Britain had been thoroughly Christianised, and if a large Christian population had continued to dwell in the country, we should surely have had some reference to these native Christians in the accounts we subsequently obtain of the conversion of the English. But we know very little of British Christianity; it might have been strong in the cities, and even among the gentry in the country, without having any real hold upon the rural population--the _pagani_ as they were called elsewhere. Dr. Hatch, speaking of the condition of Gaul when the Teutonic invasions began, has told us that the mass of the Celtic peasantry was still unconverted.[36] And this is still more likely to be true of Britain. Even if nominally Christian, half-heathen serfs, left without churches or priests, would soon relapse into paganism; especially as it would be their interest to accept the religion of their conquerors. The exact force of the argument as to religion must be left as undetermined. There is another source of information to which we might naturally turn, considering how much has been heard of it of late years. We might expect some assistance from “craniology:” the character of the skulls found in interments of the period of the English settlement ought to tell something as to the races to which they belonged. But although much attention has been given to _pre_-historic barrows, there has been comparatively little scientific examination of cemeteries of a later date. There are, at present, not enough ascertained facts to speak for themselves; and such facts as have been gathered have usually been interpreted in the light of some particular theory. When we find the late Professor Rolleston telling us that there are as many as five distinct types of skull belonging to inhabitants of Britain just before the English invasion, as well as two separate types of English skulls,[37] we see how wide a room there is for conjecture. Yet from his careful investigation of a Berkshire cemetery, which was probably characteristic of mid-England as a whole, there are two results on which we may venture to lay stress. One is that such evidence as it furnishes runs counter to the theory of intermarriage,[38] which has been so frequently resorted to in order to temper the severity of the pure Teutonic doctrine. This is intelligible enough. If the mass of the lower people were allowed to remain, while the place of the upper