lished with many a strange circumstance, partly of the classical, and partly of the chivalrous ages. On arriving in Albion (not yet called Britain) the roving Trojan had been directed in his choice by a dream, in which Diana had delivered to him an oracle in Greek, afterwards rendered into Latin, and finally translated by Milton into English, to the following effect: —
Beyond the realm of Gaul, a land there lie;
Begirt it lies, where giants dwelt of old;
Now void, it fits thy people; thither bend
Thy course—there shalt thou find a lasting seat,
There to thy sons another Troy shall rise;
And kings be born of thee, whose dreaded might
Shall awe the world, and conquer nations bold."
On landing, Brutus found the promised island wasted of its ancient inhabitants; none now dwelt in it except a remnant of those giants, the descendants of the Danaides, whose ferocious rule had been so sanguinary, that they are termed "devils" in the ancient legends. The strangers on commencing their exploration, had roused the Titanic brood, who sallied out from their caves and dens to give the intruders battle; but it fared with them as it has done with every other people who have exceeded the standard measure of humanity, for they were quickly put to the rout, and cut down with ease by their puny antagonists. One of the strongest of these giants, called Gogmagog, who was twelve cubits high, having been preserved alive, either as a specimen or a trophy, Corineus, a gallant champion of the Trojans, longed to wrestle a fall with him; but at the outset was encountered with such a hug, that three of his ribs were broken. Nothing daunted, however, by this unpromising embrace, he heaved the giant up by main force upon his shoulders, carried him to the next high rock, and there hurled him into the sea. That part of the cliffs of Dover from which the unfortunate Gogmagog was thus thrown, as Milton writes, "has been called ever since Langoemagog, which is to say, the Giant's Leap." To reward him for his valour, Brutus bestowed upon Corineus the whole county of Cornwall. These events, which are stated to have taken place about the time that Eli the high-priest governed Israel, betoken the monkish origin of this part of the legend, and show how its author must have thought of the occupation of Canaan by the Israelites, and the destruction of the gigantic race of Anak. On becoming undisputed lord of the island, Brutus erected his capital city of Troia Nova, afterwards called Trinovautum, and now London; parted Britain among his three sons, and, after a reign of twenty-four years, died in peace.
After Brutus succeeded a line of kings as long, and withal as shadowy, perhaps, as those which passed before the bewildered eye of Macbeth in the cave of Hecate. These different sovereigns love and hate, make peace and war, build cities and subdue provinces, in the usual fashion of ancient history, until their very names as well as deeds are confounded with each other; but amidst the throng, who might otherwise have passed into utter oblivion, are some whom accident, strangely enough, has exalted into full immortality. Of these, Ebranc, the fifth King of Britain after Brutus, was the first of British sovereigns who invaded France, where he seems to have been as successful as Edward III. more than 2000 years afterwards; he also built Mount Agned, or the Castle of the Maidens, round which Edinburgh was to grow in future years. The fourth in succession to him was Bladud, who had the singular merit of discovering the medicinal virtues of the hot springs of Bath, and of founding that famous city, which was originally called Caerbad. The end of this king, which was truly dolorous, supplied, in future ages, an important chapter to Johnson's Rasselus. "This Bladud," says Holinshed, "took such pleasure in artificial practices and magic, that he taught the art throughout all his realm. And to show his cunning in other points, upon a presumptuous pleasure which he had therein, he took upon him to fly in the air; but he fell upon the temple of Apollo, which stood in the city of Troynovant, and there was torn in pieces, after he had ruled the Britons by the space of twenty years." [Here we find a temple of Apollo in Loudon before Rome itself was founded!]
Bladud was succeeded by his son Lear—and. what a name to British memory and British feeling! It seems as if King Lear had died but yesterday; and that our own eyes had seen him, first as an arrogant sovereign, and unreasonable exacting father, and afterwards as a discrowned king, wandering helpless and unattended upon the heath, with his white locks beaten by the tempest, and streaming in the wind. The whole story of his dotage, in which his daughters duped him with a show of fulsome and flattering affection, and the manner in which they stripped him of the last relics of his royalty, and cast him loose into the world, were presented to Shakspeare in all the bald, dry, circumstantial narrative of the legendary scroll—and with a touch he lighted its letters into living fire, and made it a tale that shall live for ever. According to the original story, however, the old king left the land in which he had no longer a hovel to shelter him, and betook himself to France, of which his rejected Cordelia was queen. And then it was that she showed the full meaning of that single reply for which he had disinherited her, when she said to him, after her sisters had done speaking: "Father, my love towards you is as my duty bids; what
