st. of Eng._, 4to, B. i, Ch. i, Sec.7.

10. The Romans considered Britain a province of their empire, for a period
of about five hundred years; but the northern part of the island was never
entirely subdued by them, and not till Anno Domini 78, a hundred and
thirty-three years after their first invasion of the country, had they
completed their conquest of England. Letters and arts, so far at least as
these are necessary to the purposes of war or government, the victors
carried with them; and under their auspices some knowledge of Christianity
was, at a very early period, introduced into Britain. But it seems strange,
that after all that is related of their conquests, settlements, cities,
fortifications, buildings, seminaries, churches, laws, &c., they should at
last have left the Britons in so helpless, degraded, and forlorn a
condition. They _did not sow among them the seeds_ of any permanent
improvement.

11. The Roman government, being unable to sustain itself at home, withdrew
its forces finally from Britain in the year 446, leaving the wretched
inhabitants almost as savage as it found them, and in a situation even less
desirable. Deprived of their native resources, their ancient independence
of spirit, as well as of the laws, customs, institutions, and leaders, that
had kept them together under their old dynasties, and now deserted by their
foreign protectors, they were apparently left at the mercy of blind
fortune, the wretched vicissitudes of which there was none to foresee, none
to resist. The glory of the Romans now passed away. The mighty fabric of
their own proud empire crumbled into ruins. Civil liberty gave place to
barbarism; Christian truth, to papal superstition; and the lights of
science were put out by both. The shades of night gathered over all;
settling and condensing, "till almost every point of that wide horizon,
over which the Sun of Righteousness had diffused his cheering rays, was
enveloped in a darkness more awful and more portentous than that which of
old descended upon rebellious Pharaoh and the callous sons of Ham."--_Hints
on Toleration_, p. 310.

12. The Saxons entered Britain in the year 449. But what was the form of
their language at that time, cannot now be known. It was a dialect of the
_Gothic_ or _Teutonic_; which is considered the parent of all the northern
tongues of Europe, except some few of Sclavonian origin. The only remaining
monument of the Gothic language is a copy of the G