e portions with the lawful heirs; and if it
shall happen that any inheritance should hereafter, upon failure of
heirs-male, descend to females, the lawful heirs of their ancestors
last served thereof. We will, of our especial grace, that the same women
shall have their portions thereof, although this be contrary to the
custom of Wales before used."

The land system of Wales, so recognized and regulated by Edward I.,
remained unchanged until the reign of the first Tudor monarch.
Its existence raises the presumption that the aboriginal system of
landholding in England gave each son a share of his father's land,
and if so, it did not correspond with the Germanic system described by
Caesar, nor with the tribal system of the Celts in Ireland, nor with the
feudal system subsequently introduced.

The polity of the Romans, which endured in Gaul, Spain, and Italy,
and tinged the laws and usages of these countries after they had
been occupied by the Goths, totally disappeared in England; and even
Christianity, which partially prevailed under the Romans, was submerged
beneath the flood of invasion. Save the material evidence of the
footprints of "the masters of the world" in the Roman roads, Roman wall,
and some other structures, there is no trace of the Romans in England.
Their polity, laws, and language alike vanished, and did not reappear
for centuries, when their laws and language were reimported.

I should not be disposed to estimate the population of England and
Wales, at the retirement of the Romans, at more than 1,500,000. They
were like a flock of sheep without masters, and, deprived of the
watch-dogs which over-awed and protected them, fell an easy prey to the
invaders.

III. THE SCANDINAVIANS.

The Roman legions and the outlying semi-military settlements along the
Rhine and the Danube, forming a cordon reaching from the German Ocean to
the Black Sea, kept back the tide of barbarians, but the volume of
force accumulated behind the barrier, and at length it poured in an
overwhelming and destructive tide over the fair and fertile provinces
whose weak and effeminate people offered but a feeble resistance to the
robust armies of the north. The Romans, under the instruction of Caesar
and Tacitus, had a faint idea of the usages of the people inhabiting the
verge that lay around the Roman dominions, but they had no knowledge
of the influences that prevailed in "the womb of nations," as Central
Europe appeared to