nobility, the dying king quickly got well again, summoned a council to meet him at York, and there so handled the matter, that Archigallo was received by the commons as he had been by the lords; after which, Eliduro, with his own hands, placed the royal crown upon his brother's head, and was the first to hail him as king. Penetrated to the heart's core by such a wondrous instance of justice, generosity, and brotherly love, the now restored wanderer became one of the best of kings, and dying childless after a reign of ten years, was succeeded once more by Elidure.
We now gladly rush to the close of this array of shadows and phantoms, and hasten into the dawn which begins with the period of Cæsar's Cassivellaunus. The father of this last-mentioned king was Eli or Hely, who reigned forty years, and the most distinguished event of whose reign is thus specified by Holinshed, on the authority of the old British historians:—"Marry, this is not to be forgotten, that of the aforesaid Hely, the last of the said thirty-three kings, the Isle of Ely took the name, because that he most commonly did there inhabit, building in the same a goodly palace, and making great reparations of the sluices, ditches, and causeways about that isle, for conveyance away of the water, that else would sore have endomaged the country." Nineteen years before the arrival of the Romans, Hely was succeeded by his eldest son, Lud, who is described in high terms as a jolly feaster, warrior, legislator, and reformer of abuses, and also a great builder, repairing many of the old towns and stately edifices that had gone to decay. He also enlarged the city of Troynovant, and surrounded it with a strong wall of stone, in consequence of which it thenceforth obtained the name of Lud-town, or London. Among those architectural undertakings with which he aggrandized the capital, are particularly mentioned Lud's Gate, afterwards called Ludgate; the palace in its neighbourhood, afterwards the Bishop of London's palace; and a temple, which subsequently became St. Paul's Church. Such were but a few of his many undertakings, which are recorded by the old British historians with careful circumstantiality and most praiseworthy gravity.
On the death of Lud, whose two sons were still minors, Cassivellaunus, his brother, succeeded to the royal power. And now it is that the old British annalists, feeling themselves hampered between the Commentaries of Cæsar on the one hand, and the fanciful traditions of the country on the other, proceed in their course with unwonted caution. On this account they are unable precisely to determine whether Cassivellaunus was raised to the throne, or merely appointed regent. By their statement, however, his administration was so just and able that he was worthy of the esteem of the Britons, who set aside the claims of his nephews, and recognized him as their only king. Cassivellaunus acted a generous part towards these orphans, by investing the elder with the sovereignty of London and Kent, and the younger with that of Cornwall. And hero the Muse of ancient British history abruptly retires, like one detected in falsehood, and gives place to a more credible witness, after having fabled for the long course of 1058 years. And here also Milton, who had followed the narrative, frequently in doubt, and sometimes in utter disbelief, thus welcomes the approaching change: — "By this time, like one who had set out on his way by night, and travelled through a region of smooth or idle dreams, our history now arrives on the confines, where daylight and truth meet us with a clear dawn, representing to our view, though at a far distance, true colours and shapes. For albeit Cæsar, whose authority we are now first to follow, wanted not who taxed him of misreporting in his Commentaries, yea, in his Civil Wars against Pompey, much more may we think in the British affairs, of whose little skill in writing he did not easily hope to be contradicted; yet now, in such variety of good authors, we hardly can miss from one hand or other to be sufficiently informed as of things passed so long ago."
In the foregoing history of Britain, which we have so briefly passed over, the first thought that strikes us is the long series of kings, whose characters and deeds are as confidently sketched as if they had been men of yesterday; and the extended period of time which they necessarily occupy, stopping short only within a brief distance of the Deluge itself But this difficulty is easily got rid of, when we remember the nature of that government which prevailed among the Celtic people. Among them a king was but the chieftain of his own tribe, and not of the nation at large; and, therefore, sometimes not less than a dozen of sovereigns might have been found reigning in Britain at one and the same time. Nothing was more natural at a later period, than to mistake these reguli for sole kings of the whole country, and to arrange their histories into successive periods, instead of making them contemporaneous. Such has been the case in the early annals of many other countries where this patriarchal system of government prevailed; and the great perplexity of antiquaries and historians, in such instances, has been occasioned by a long course of life and action, to which the earliest antiquity could afford no room.
By keeping, then, the fact in mind, that our island was divided into many families and septs, each of which had its own ruler, several kings may be comprised within a single generation, and a whole century condensed into a few years. In
