which the Roman lords of Britain had given to the prosperous city
on the Colne, in which the native Prince, King Coel, had his court--the
city which to-day is known under its later Saxon name of Colchester.

It was, indeed, a curious state of affairs in England. I doubt if many
of my girl and boy readers, no matter how, well they may stand in
their history classes, have ever thought of the England of Hereward and
Ivanhoe, of Paul Dombey and Tom Brown, as a Roman land.

And yet at the time when this little Flavia Julia Helena was sailing
down the river Colne, the island of Britain, in its southern section
at least, was almost as Roman in manner, custom, and speech as was Rome
itself.

For nearly five hundred years, from the days of Caesar the conqueror,
to those of Honorius the unfortunate, was England, or Britain as it was
called, a Roman province, broken only in its allegiance by the early
revolts of the conquered people or by the later usurpations of ambitious
and unprincipled governors.

And, at the date of our story, in the year 255 A.D., the beautiful
island had so far grown out of the barbarisms of ancient Britain as to
have long since forgotten the gloomy rites and open-air altars of the
Druids, and all the half-savage surroundings of those stern old priests.

Everywhere Roman temples testified to the acceptance by the people of
the gods of Rome, and little Helena herself each morning hung the altar
of the emperor-god Claudius with garlands in the stately temple which
had been built in his honor in her father's palace town, asked the
protection of Cybele, "the Heavenly Virgin," and performed the rites
that the Empire demanded for "the thousand gods of Rome."

Throughout the land, south of the massive wall which the great Emperor
Hadrian had stretched across the island from the mouth of the Solway to
the mouth of the Tyne, the people themselves who had gathered into or
about the thirty growing Roman cities which the conquerors had founded
and beautified, had become Roman in language, religion, dress, and ways,
while the educational influences of Rome, always following the course of
her conquering eagles, had planted schools and colleges throughout the
land, and laid the foundation for that native learning which in later
years was to make the English nation so great and powerful.

And what a mighty empire must have been that of Rome that, in those
far-off days, when rapid transit was unknown, and steam and