er south, in the regions which
were called from them Essex, Sussex, Middlesex, and Wessex: Saxons of
the east, south, centre, and west. It was in these two groups of
tribes, or kingdoms, that literature reached the greatest development,
and it was principally between them also that the struggle for supremacy
set in, after the conquest. Hence the name of Anglo-Saxons generally
given to the inhabitants of the soil, in respect of the period during
which purely Germanic dialects were spoken in England. This composite
word, recently the cause of many quarrels, has the advantage of being
clear; long habit is in its favour; and its very form suits an epoch
when the country was not unified, but belonged to two principal
agglomerations of tribes, that of the Angles and that of the Saxons.[33]

In the same way as in Gaul, the invaders found themselves in the
presence of a people infinitely more civilised than themselves, skilled
in the arts, excellent agriculturists, rich traders, on whose soil arose
those large towns that the Romans had fortified, and connected by roads.
Never had they beheld anything like it, nor had they names for such
things. They had in consequence to make additions to their vocabulary.
Not knowing how to designate these unfamiliar objects, they left them
the names they bore in the language of the inhabitants: _castrum_,
_strata_, _colonia_; which became in their language _chester_, _street_,
or _strat_, as in Stratford, and _coln_ as in Lincoln.

The Britons who had taken to the toga--"frequens toga," says
Tacitus--and who were no longer protected by the legions, made a vain
resistance; the advancing tide of barbarians swept over them, they
ceased to exist as a nation. Contributions were levied on the cities,
the country was laid waste, villas were razed to the ground, and on all
the points where the natives endeavoured to face the enemy, fearful
hecatombs were slaughtered by the worshippers of Woden.

They could not, however, destroy all; and here comes in the important
question of Celtic survival. Some admirers of the conquerors credit them
with superhuman massacres. According to them no Celt survived; and the
race, we are told, was either driven back into Wales or destroyed, so
that the whole land had to be repopulated, and that a new and wholly
Germanic nation, as pure in blood as the tribes on the banks of the
Elbe, grew up on British soil. But if facts are examined it will be
found that this title t