MS

BOOK II

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Book II

THE GARDEN OF DREAMS

I

The years went on,--misty Springs, golden Summers, flaming Autumns,
Winters stark and chill, leaving each its tale on the unrolling scroll
of time. For in those years the consul departed from Britain with his
forces, and the cities ruled themselves, each in a state of feudal
independence, now warring amongst themselves, now making common cause
against their common foes.

Were history to write itself more often with a view to cumulative
dramatic effect, there would be small need for the romance of
imagination. One would have history a tale, of swift climax and
excitement, when it is in fact a scattered medley--a battle here, a bit
of statecraft there; here a burning Rome, yonder a new God; and between
these the commonplace round of human life and toil and death, the
inevitable dead level of the tale. It is because of the long lapses
between cause and effect, the revolutions slow and of secret tardy
growth instead of by fire and sword, that men turn to Imagination to
bridge the gap. Events, grand and stirring, woven, one believes, into
the very fabric of history, are proved to be the pleasant tale of some
ancient ardent romancer, with an eye for dramatic effect. And often it
is the bit choicest and most intimate of detail, binding the chronicle
into a dramatic whole, which the iron pick of Research digs from the
heap of bones, and wise men say: "That brilliant hero never lived; this
great battle was but a skirmish; some old monk wrote that--it never
happened." Many a glowing jewel, cherished tenderly and shining bravely
through the dust of ages, has turned, in the white light of knowledge,
to worthless glass. So do the old gods perish.

Thus came the chronicle of Saxon conquest down to us,--a brave and lusty
tale, scarred with battles, written in blood, picturing a horde of
savage foe-men that swarmed over the Walls and swept through a
blood-drenched land. In fact and deed, it was a conquest of absorption
rather than extermination, dramatic only in its vast significance; a
gradual amalgamation of two forces, in which the stronger, cleaner Norse
blood triumphed over worn-out and depleted Roman stock. As weeds, rank
and sturdy, overrun a garden, choking out other plants, so in Britain,
Saxon life overgrew Roman life, inch by inch, almost imperceptibly. The
conquest was by no means bloodl