Britain, after the departure of the Romans, was no longer a country covered every way with wild waving woods, dangerous bogs, and vast wastes of reedy and unprofitable marshes. Smooth green pastures, where flocks and herds lowed and bleated, and long slips of corn waved in the summer sunshine, and fruit-trees which in spring were hung with white and crimson blossoms, and whose branches in autumn bowed beneath the weight of heavy fruitage, now swelled above the swampy waste, and gave a cheerful look to the grassy glade which had made room for the bright sunshine to enter into the very heart of those gloomy old forests. Walled towns, also, heaved up above the landscape, and great broad brown roads went stretching for miles through a country over which, a few centuries before, a mounted horseman would have foundered. The dreamy silence which once reigned for weary miles over the lonesome woodland, was now broken by the hum of human voices; and the ancient oaks, which for many a silent year had only over-shadowed the lairs of beasts of the chase, now overhung pleasant footpaths, or stretched along the sides of well-frequented roads, sure guides to the lonely wayfarer that he could no longer mistake his course from town to town. Though many a broad bog, and long league of wood and wilderness still lay on either hand, yet, every here and there, the home of man rose up amid the waste, showing that the stir of life had begun to break the sleep of those solitudes. Instead of the shadowy avenue of trees which marked the entrance to their forest fortresses, lofty arches now spanned the roads which opened into their walled streets, and above the roofs of their houses tall temples towered in all the richness of Roman architecture, dedicated to the classical gods and goddesses whose sculptured forms graced the lofty domes of the imperial city. Few and far between, in the dim groves, whose silent shadows remained undisturbed, the tall grass climbed and drooped about the neglected altar of the druids, and on the huge stone where the holy fire once burned, the grey lichen and the green moss now grew. Even the Roman sentinel, as he paced to and fro behind the lofty battlement, sometimes halted in the midst of his measured march, and leaned on his spear to listen to the low "Hallelujah" which came floating with faint sound upon the air, as if fearful of awakening the spirit of some angry idolator. In the stars which pave the blue floor of heaven, men began to trace the form of the cross, and to see the spirit of the dove in the white moonlight that threw its silver upon the face of the waters, for Britain already numbered amongst her slaughtered sons those who had suffered martrydom for the love they bore to their crucified Redeemer. Under the shadow of the Roman eagles had marched soldiers, proud that they bore on their hearts the image of the cross of Christ. In spite of the decree of Diocletian, the Gospel sound still spread, and around