n colony;
but found, on his arrival, that it would be requisite for the general
safety, to abandon that place to the merciless fury of the enemy. London
was reduced to ashes; such of the inhabitants as remained in it were
cruelly massacred; the Romans and all strangers, to the number of
seventy thousand, were every where put to the sword without distinction;
and the Britons, by rendering the war thus bloody, seemed determined
to cut off all hopes of peace or composition with the enemy. But this
cruelty was revenged by Suetonius in a great and decisive battle, where
eighty thousand of the Britons are said to have perished, and Boadicea
herself, rather than fall into the hands of the enraged victor, put an
end to her own life by poison.[*] Nero soon after recalled Suetonius
from a government, where, by suffering and inflicting so many
severities, he was judged improper for composing the angry and alarmed
minds of the inhabitants. After some interval, Cerealis received the
command from Vespasian, and by his bravery propagated the terror of the
Roman arms, Julius Frontinus succeeded Cerealis both in authority and in
reputation: but the general who finally established the dominion of
the Romans in this island, was Julius Agricola, who governed it in the
reigns of Vespasian, Titus, and Domitian, and distinguished himself in
that scene of action.

This great commander formed a regular plan for subduing Britain, and
rendering the acquisition useful to the conquerors. He carried his
victorious arms northwards, defeated the Britons in every encounter,
pierced into the inaccessible forests and mountains of Caledonia,
reduced every state to subjection in the southern parts of the island,
and chased before him all the men of fiercer and more intractable
spirits, who deemed war and death itself less intolerable than servitude
under the victors. He even defeated them in a decisive action, which
they fought under Galgacus, their leader; and having fixed a chain of
garrisons between the Friths of Clyde and Forth, he thereby cut off
the ruder and more barren parts of the island, and secured the Roman
province from the incursions of the barbarous inhabitants.[*]

[* Tacit Ann. lib. xiv.]

During these military enterprises, he neglected not the arts of peace.
He introduced laws and civility among the Britons, taught them to desire
and raise all the conveniences of life, reconciled them to the Roman
language and manners, instructed