Sketches of Lancashire Life And Localities

forts of many generations of heroic people ; and the firmament of its biography is illumined by stars of the first magnitude. What we know of its history previous to the conquest by the Romans, is clouded by much conjecture and romance ; but we have sufficient evidence to show that, even then, this island gem, " set in the silver sea," was known in distant regions of the earth, and prized for its natural riches; and was inhabited by a brave and ingenious race of people. During the last two thousand years, the masters of the world have been fighting to win it, or to keep it. The woad-stained British savage, ardent, imaginative, and brave, roved through his native woods and marshes, hunting the wild beasts of the island. He sometimes herded cattle, but was little given to tillage. He sold tin to the Phoenicians, and knew something about smelting iron ore, and working it into such shapes as were useful in a life of wild, 'wandering insecurity and warfare, such as his. In the slim coracle, he roamed the island's waters; and scoured its plains fiercely in battle, in his soythed car, a terror to the boldest foe. He worshipped, too,), in an awful way, in sombre old woods, andin colossal Stonehenges, under the blue, o'erarching sky. On lone wastes, and moorland hiUs, we still have the rudely magnificent relics of these ancient temples, frowning at time, and seeming to say, as they look with lonely solemnity on nature's ever-returning green, in the words of their old Dru...