tures, and books, and statues, if there is
no food to be had, though one bid for it all the pictures in the house?
With the merchants, there were the priests, the physicians, the lawyers,
the actors and mimics, the artists, the teachers, all who minister to
religion, luxury, and culture. There were next the great mass of the
people, the clerks and scribes, the craftsmen, the salesmen, the
lightermen, stevedores, boatmen, marine store keepers, makers of ships'
gear, porters--slaves for the most part--all from highest to lowest,
plunged into helplessness. Whither could they fly for refuge? Upon whom
could they call for help?

7. AFTER THE ROMANS.

PART III.

Abroad, the Roman Empire was breaking up. The whole of Europe was
covered with war. Revolts of conquered tribes, rebellions of successful
generals, invasions of savages, the murders of usurpers, the sacking of
cities. Rome itself was sacked by Alaric; the conquest of one country
after another made of this period the darkest in the history of the
world. From over the seas no help, the enemy blocking the mouth of the
river, all the roads closed and all the farms destroyed.

There came a day at length when it was at last apparent that no more
supplies would reach the City. Then the people began to leave the place:
better to fight their way across the country to the west where the
Britons still held their own, than to stay and starve. The men took
their arms--they carried little treasure with them, because treasure
would be of no use to them on their way--their wives and children,
ladies as delicate and as helpless as any of our own time--children as
unfit as our own to face the miseries of cold and hunger and
nakedness--and they went out by the gate of Watling Street, not
altogether, not the whole population, but in small companies, for
greater safety. They left the City by the gate; they did not journey
along the road, but for safety turned aside into the great forest, and
so marching across moors and marshes, past burned homesteads, and
ruined villages, and farm buildings thrown down, those of them who did
not perish by the way under the enemies' sword or by malarious fever, or
by starvation, reached the Severn and the border of the mountains where
the Saxon could not penetrate.

There was left behind a remnant--after every massacre or exodus there is
always left a remnant. The people who stayed in the City were only a few
and those of the baser sort, pro