still very rude: the making of pottery, and spinning and weaving. Pieces of rough pottery are often found in their caves, and some pieces of woven stuff, either of straw or of flax, and also stone spindle-whorls.

17. As far as we can judge, though they sometimes lived in caves, they had also learned to make a rude kind of house. It was most likely the neolithic men who raised many of the mounds or tumuli, of which there are great numbers in England, as well as in other parts of Europe, and which are generally tombs. Many of them have been opened, and skeletons found in them. Sometimes they contain a large, hollow chamber, with walls of big, rough stones, and a stone passage leading to it. Within the chamber may be found a number of skeletons, sitting or crouching just as they were buried. With the human beings were often buried the things which in life they valued most; with warriors, their weapons; with "ladies," as Sir John Lubbock calls them, their ornaments. "When a great man died, he was placed on his favourite seat; food and drink were set before him; his weapons placed by his side; his house was closedsometimes to be opened again when his wife or children joined him." So it seems that the tumuli may have been sometimes the real houses where the people had lived; and sometimes they were, perhaps, imitations of them. Many people think that both these and the paleolithic men showed a belief in the immortality of the soul by providing their dead with necessaries and pleasures. They probably thought that the weapons, food, &c., had a kind of spirit also, which would attend the spirit of the man after the death of his body.

The neolithic men were rather a small race-their skeletons show that they were about five feet five inches in height. The implements they could make were, among others, axes, wedges, chisels, hammers, poniards, and lance-heads. They could also make ornaments of gold.

The third period.

18. After this, we come to another period, where another great advance is discernible. Men had by this time learned to work in metals. If you will think over all the implements we have in common use, you will find we scarcely ever use anything made of stone, or bone, or horn. Almost all our tools and weapons are of metal-knives, ploughs, spades, swords, guns, needles, &c. It was a vast step forward to have found out how to work metals. Gold, which the neolithic people had employed for ornaments, is soft and easy to work, but of very little use either for sharpness or strength. Our tools

are, of course, principally made of iron, but that was far too difficult a metal to begin with. Copper seems to have been the first useful metal noticed by man. Iron is hardly ever found, except in ore; but copper is often found native, and, not being very hard, it can be beaten into shape. Iron is difficult to cast, but copper is very easy. It seems, however, to have been soon discovered that copper is more serviceable when mixed with a small quantity of tin. It is then called bronze; and bronze is the commonest metal found in ancient deposits. No implement of pure tin has ever been found, and hardly any of pure copper; but many thousands of bronze implements have been found in England, Ireland, and various parts of Europe; therefore this period is called the bronze period.

19. It is not certain whether the people who made the bronze implements were the descendants of the neolithic men, but it appears most probable that they were, and that they had gradually progressed. It is almost certain that we have many of their descendants among us still, and are even partly of their race ourselves.

Further improvement.

20. These people seem to have quite given up living in caves, and had learnt to build houses. We do not know much about their houses from anything found in England, but those who lived in Switzerland made curious villages in the lakes, supported on strong piles, and so did those who lived in Wales and Ireland. In the Swiss lakes, round about the remains of the old piles, innumerable relics have been found, which tell us a good deal about the way of life of these people. We may even see the very food they used to eat.

21. They had a great deal of corn. Bushels of grain have been found, and even pieces of bread, or, rather, unleavened cakes about an inch thick; wild apples and pears, sometimes cut in halves or quarters, dried, and stored up for winter use; stones of wild plums, seeds of raspberries and blackberries, shells of hazel nuts. They had also domestic animals.

22. They could certainly weave linen; for many remains of linen tissue have been found in England among their bronze implements in some of the tumuli. But we know a great deal about their dress; for in Denmark the grave and coffin of a chief were opened, and his whole suit of clothes was found, as if he had been buried in them. The body was very much changed; the bones were turned into a kind of blue powder; the brain was the least changed of all. It was found at one end of the coffin, covered by a thick woollen cap. The body had been wrapped

in a coarse woollen cloth, a woollen shirt, two shawls with long fringes, leggings, and at the other end of the coffin were some fragments of leather, doubtless the remains of boots or shoes. We must own he had a very comfortable dress. In the coffin with him were found also another cap, a small comb, and a knife, packed in a little box, and by his side a bronze sword in a wooden sheath. This man had probably died late in the bronze period, for most generally in the earlier times the dead were burned, and the ashes collected in an urn.

23. As to the implements they made, the commonest are called "celts," which could be used for chisels, hoes, or axes, and which were cast in moulds of sand. They could also make very beautiful swords, with ornamental handles; daggers, spears, arrows, knives, and fish-hooks; and pretty bracelets, brooches, hair-pins, and buttons; for they had by no means out-grown the love of ornaments.

They had likewise improved very much in making pottery, and in decorating their jars and vases with different patterns. But they did not yet know how to make them flat at the bottom, so as to stand steady; they were mostly round, and had to be supported on rings of earthenware. Many of the large vases seem to have been used for storing nuts and other fruits for winter use.

It is supposed that these were the people who built Stonehenge, that mysterious circle of stones on Salisbury Plain, which has always been considered one of the wonders of England; but this is not quite certain.

24. When we come to what are called "historic" times, we find the people of whom we read had left off using stone and bronze, and had their tools and weapons made of Iron. iron, as we have now. As iron is so much more difficult to work than bronze, this shows that men must have improved greatly in skill; but we know very little about the way they first took to it. Only it is believed that the first iron used was not smelted out of ore, but was some of the "meteoric" iron which sometimes falls from the sky, and which is almost pure metal. Some of the oldest names for iron we know ofthe Greek and the Egyptian-mean the "starry" and the "skystone," or "stone of heaven." And when they had found how keen, how hard, how precious the heavenly metal was, they would soon think it worth while to take a great deal of trouble to purify that which they found mixed up with baser matters on earth.

LECTURE II.-THE ROMANS.

The Romans-their position in the world at the beginning of British history--their armies, navy, colonies, religion and morality; their lawstreatment of subject nations-habits and amusements-their slaves.

1. WHEN we come to "historic" times, that is, times in which people observed and wrote down the events which happened, we do not, at first, find that the inhabitants of Britain did so about themselves. But other and quite trustworthy people wrote of them.

2. It was mentioned in the last lecture that Great Britain and Ireland used to be joined to the mainland of Europe, though long before the historic period that had ceased to be the case. Still there has always been a very close connection between our isles and the Continent, and we can never understand the history of England without knowing something also about the state of Europe. The first people, from whose writings we learn something about our country and those who lived in it, were the Romans, who were for several hundred years the most important nation in the world.

The Romans.

3. They had conquered and made their own almost all the great old nations of which we know anything, except Conquests. Assyria and Persia. The first civilized nation of which we hear is Egypt, which we read of as great and powerful in the first book of the Bible; we can see it alsc for ourselves in the great works they left behind-their pyramids, temples, and sculptures. That country the Romans had conquered. Travelling eastward we come to Palestine; from which we have our religion; our belief in one God, and our Bible. That too the Romans had conquered. We all know from the New Testament that the Jews "had no king but Cæsar." Then we come to Syria and Phoenicia. The people of those countries were the first great sailors and merchants, and from them too we get our letters of the alphabet. Try and realize that wonderful invention, and what we should be without it. To think of writing at all, making pictures or signs for words, is marvellous enough; but to invent an alphabet in which a few signs could be made to

represent all the thousands of words we use, seems absolutely astonishing. They were conquered. Next we come to Asia Minor, where there were beautiful cities, such as Ephesus; full of art, and with an old history. Conquered too. Soon we arrive at Greece, with a still older and nobler history; all full of heroes, of wonders, of poets, and of sages. Though we must not linger over it now, we may feel sure that, next to our religion, we have learnt more from the great Greeks than from any other people. Conquered too. Now we come to Italy itself, the lovely land. At the time we are speaking of, it does not occur to our minds as being beautiful, but as being strong; but afterwards it became the home of painting and of poetry. Then France, or Gaul, as it was called, and Spain, which had not yet got their history, but had a famous future before them. And now we travel round again, along the north of Africa, "the parts of Libya about Cyrene," which the Romans after hard fighting had mastered; and we see that their dominion bordered the whole of the great inland or Mediterranean Sea.

4. Now what sort of people were these who had gone forth in this way, conquering and to conquer ?

We cannot doubt, in the first place, that they were great soldiers. In those times fighting was considered a much better and more desirable thing than it is now. In very ancient history we find a state of perpetual war; a state in which a man could only feel secure in the possession of his lands or his flocks as long as he had strength in his own right arm to defend them. It was not thought at all disgraceful, but very honourable, for a stronger man to surprise and take them for himself. The people of one family helped and befriended one another; and as families increased in number they gradually grew into tribes, which hung together and supported each other; and the successful tribes, again, by degrees grew into nations; and it was the natural state of things for them to be at war with all other families, or tribes, or nations.

5. The Romans had begun in a very small way, by building a rough little village, which in the course of years grew into the stately city of Rome; while they themselves grew into the great conquerors and masters we have seen. It is supposed to have been about 750 years from the foundation of the city to the birth of Christ, which occurred soon after the time when Britain first took her place in written history. Some of the wiser of them had now begun to think it time to stop in the career of conquest, though they did add some other provinces afterwards.