the sense of luxury of the women, but, as object lessons of art and elegance, they were in the highest degree educative. They stimulated woman's imagination and piqued her interest in regard to the women of those far distant lands, with whom such articles were in ordinary use. We hear of travellers' tales, carried back by the early voyagers to Britain, which, by their incredible coloring, awakened the wonder of the Greeks; but probably as much amazement and interest were aroused among the Britons by the marvellous tales, told by the Phoenicians and other traders, concerning the nations among which were manufactured the articles brought by them to barter for the metals, furs, woods, and other products of Britain. In this way, a distorted knowledge of the outside world and of the accomplishments of highly civilized peoples came to be widely diffused among the more advanced of the rude inhabitants of Britain. The arrival of a ship in port was an event of absorbing interest; soon the women of the coast settlements would be seen busily traversing the narrow, winding paths by which the houses of a village were connected, to gossip with their neighbors about the latest bit of wonderful narrative picked up from the oddly garbed foreign sailors concerning the mighty nations of the remote parts of the earth, or to display some purchase--a piece of cloth of fine web or of bright colors, a chased fibula, a string of beads, or articles of like nature. It would be difficult to exaggerate the effect upon the mentality and the life interest of the simple-minded yet keenly inquiring British women of the commerce which, at first occasional, gradually became regular and expanding, and by which Britain was brought out of its insular separateness into the broad current of the world's progress. The population of Britain was large--as the Romans found when they came into the country. The people were collected into villages and towns which were ruled by chieftains who were frequently at war with one another. During such strife their women were hidden in caves or pits covered with brush; this was a necessary protective measure for the loss of its women was the severest blow a people could suffer. This division of the tribes into little warring factions was the cause of the country falling readily a prey to the Romans.