AN ABRIDGMENT OF ENGLISH HISTORY. BOOK I. CHAP. I. Causes of the Connexion between the Romans and Britains.— Cæsar's two Invasions of Britain. N order to obtain a clear notion of the state of CHAP. IN Europe before the universal prevalence of the Roman power, the whole region is to be divided into two principal parts, which we shall call Northern and Southern Europe. The northern part is every where separated from the southern by immense and continued chains of mountains. From Greece it is divided by Mount Hæmus ; from Spain by the Pyrenees; from Italy by the Alps. This division is not made by an arbitrary or casual distribution of countries. The limits are marked out by Nature; and in these early ages were yet further distinguished by a considerable difference in the manners and usages of the nations they divided. M 3 I. I. BOOK divided. If we turn our eyes to the northward of these boundaries, a vast mass of solid continent lies before us, stretched out from the remotest shore of Tartary quite to the Atlantick Ocean. A line, drawn through this extent from East to West, would pass over the greatest body of unbroken land, that is any where known upon the globe. This tract, in a course of some degrees to the northward, is not interrupted by any sea; neither are the mountains so disposed as to form any considerable obstacle to hostile incursions. Originally it was all inhabited but by one sort of people, known by one common denomination of Scythians. As the several tribes of this comprehensive name lay in many parts greatly exposed, and as by their situations and customs they were much inclined to attack, and by both ill qualified for defence, throughout the whole of that immense region there was for many ages a perpetual flux and reflux of barbarous nations. None of their commonwealths continued long enough established on any particular spot to settle, and to subside into a regular order; one tribe continually overpowering or thrusting out another. But as these were only the mixtures of Scythians with Scythians, the triumphs of Barbarians over Barbarians, there were revolutions in empire, but none in manners. The northern Europe, until some parts of it were subdued by the progress of the Roman Arms, remained almost equally |