to-day form part of the British Empire, but which are destined to become independent nations. In fact we hesitate to look still further into the future of the English race, for fear of being accused of exaggeration. There is a mythical version of the settlement of Britain contradictory of the Roman records. This version is that of Gildas whose ‘De Excidio Britanniæ’ is supposed to have been composed in the sixth century (560 A.D.), and whose statements have unfortunately been taken by one historian after the other as a true history of Britain. His narrative, which gives an account of the first arrival of the Saxons in Britain and the numerous wars which followed their invasion, has been more or less copied by Nennius, Bede and subsequent chroniclers, whose writings are a mass of glaring contradictions, diffuse and intricate, for they contain names which appear to have been invented by the writers and which cannot be traced in the language of those times, while the dates assigned for the landing of the so-called Saxons do not agree with one another. The historians who use Gildas as an authority and try to believe his account of the settlement of Britain by Hengist and Horsa (the stallion and the mare) are obliged, in order to explain away the Roman records, to give a most extraordinary interpretation to the Notitia. We are all aware that the people of every country like to trace their origin or history as far back as possible, and that legends often form part of the fabric of those histories. The early chroniclers, who were credulous and profoundly ignorant of the world, took these fables for facts, or they may have possibly been incorporated in the text of their supposed works after their time. The description of the settlement of a country must be founded on facts which can bear the test of searching criticism if they are to be believed and adopted; Gildas and his copyists cannot stand that test, and the Roman records, as corroborated by the archæology and literature of the North and the archæology of England, must be taken as the correct ones. The mythological literature of the North bears evidence of a belief prevalent among the people, that their ancestors migrated at a remote period from the shores of the Black Sea, through south-western Russia, to the shores of the Baltic. This belief seems to be supported by a variety of evidence. Herodotus describes a people on the Tanais, the Budini, as being blue-eyed and yellow-haired, with houses built of wood, his description of the walls reminding one of the characteristics of the Danavirki (Herodotus, IV. 21, 108, 109). One of his tribes, the _Thysagetæ_, may possibly be indicated in the _Thursar_ of the Voluspa, &c.