Page:Dickens - A Child s History of England, 1900.djvu/21

Rh he himself was betrayed into the hands of the Romans by his false and base stepmother; and they carried him, and all his family, in triumph to Rome.

But a great man will be great in misfortune, great in prison, great in chains. His noble air, and dignified endurance of distress, so touched the Roman people who thronged the streets to see him, that he and his family were restored to freedom. No one knows whether his great heart broke, and he died in Rome, or whether he ever returned to his own dear country. English oaks have grown up from acorns, and withered away, when they were hundreds of years old—and other oaks have sprung up in their places, and died too, very aged—since the rest of the history of the brave was forgotten.

Still, the Britons would not yield. They rose again and again, and died by thousands, sword in hand. They rose, on every possible occasion. , another Roman general, came, and stormed the Island of Anglesey (then called ), which was supposed to be sacred, and he burnt the Druids in their own wicker cages, by their own fires. But, even while he was in Britain, with his victorious troops, the rose. Because, a British queen, the widow of the King of the Norfolk and Suffolk people, resisted the plundering of her property by the Romans who were settled in England, she was scourged, by order of a Roman officer; and her two daughters were shamefully insulted in her presence, and her husband's relations were made slaves. To avenge this injury, the Britons rose, with all their might and rage. They drove into Gaul; they laid the Roman possessions waste; they forced the Romans out of London, then a poor little town, but a trading-place; they hanged, burnt, crucified, and slew by the sword, seventy thousand Romans in a few days. strengthened his army, and advanced to give them battle. They strengthened their army, and desperately attacked his, on the field where it was strongly posted. Before the first charge of the Britons was made,, in a war-chariot, with her fair hair streaming in the wind, and her injured daughters lying at her feet, drove among the troops, and cried to them for vengeance on their oppressors, the licentious Romans. The Britons fought to