disappeared, and their language is extinct, so that the accounts given of this people by ancient writers seem almost fabulous. Who will not mark the difference between the devotion to heavenly and the pursuit of earthy things, when he reflects that not only the kings and chiefs, but the whole race of this heathen people have utterly perished; and that all memory of them, and, what is more wonderful, their very language, the gift of God in the origin of their nation, is quite lost.
Let what we have thus far written, though many things we have treated briefly, suffice with regard to the site and general characteristics of Britain. We come now to speak of the people by whom, and the time at which, the island was first inhabited. What we do not find in Bede we borrow from other authors[1]. They tell us that the British nation was founded by Dardanus, who was the father of Troius. Troius was the father of Priamus and Anchises. Anchises was the father of Aeneas, Aeneas of Ascanius, Ascanius of Silvius. When the wife of Silvius was pregnant, a soothsayer predicted that the son she should bring forth would slay his father. The soothsayer was put to death for this prophesy; but the son that was born, and who was called Brute, after a time, while he was playing with boys of his own age, struck his father with an arrow and killed him. It was not done purposely, but by chance-medley; whereupon Brute, being banished from Italy, came into Gaul. There he founded the city of Tours, and having afterwards invaded the district of the Armoricans, he passed from thence into this island, subjugated its southern regions, and called it, after his own name, Britain. Some writers, however, affirm that when Brute reigned in Britain, Eli, the high-priest, was judge of Israel, and Posthumus or Silvius, son of Aeneas, reigned among the Latins. Brute was his grandson. After an interval of 80 years, it happened that the Picts, a Scythian race, having embarked upon the ocean, were driven by the winds round the coast of Britain, till at length they reached the north of Ireland, where, finding the nation of the Scots already in possession,
- ↑ This fabulous account of the origin of the Britons is taken from Nennius, iii. v.
