But side by side with the growth of a gracious civilisation in England, there was constant warfare on the borders. The wilder natives of the British islands refused the Roman sway, and threatened by their forays the security of the new cities. This made necessary a great military organisation, which has left its mark on the England of to-day in the Roman roads and the sites of Roman military camps dotted all over the country from the Thames to the Tweed. The remains of these camps are quite distinguishable in many places; and generally they are known as "Cæsar's camps," whether Julius Cæsar ever saw their neighbourhood or not. Probably Carausius was the "Cæsar" of many of these camps.
Despite the border wars the Romanised Britons got on fairly comfortably until the failing power of the Roman Empire made it necessary for the Roman legions to withdraw to Italy. This left Romanised Britain to be attacked by the wilder Britons of the north and the west. That these attacks should have been as successful as they were, hints that the south Briton of England was rather a soft fellow. Since, as we will find later, the Anglo-Saxon—once comfortably settled in England—showed a tendency also to become a soft fellow, and had to be pricked to greatness by the Dane and the Norman, it would almost seem that this gentle, green, cloudy England has ultimately a softening effect on its inhabitants. But fresh blood pours in to bring vigour. England invites adventurers by her beauty and then tames them. Because of her perpetual invitation the British nation has been made of a brew of Briton, Roman, Anglo-Saxon, Danish, and Norman bloods, and all these people have left their mark on the landscape of the country.
CHAPTER II
THE MAKING OF ENGLAND—THE ANGLO-SAXONS AND THE NORMANS
How the Romanised Briton of England would have fared ultimately in his contest with the more savage Britons of the north and the west, who came to rob him down to his toga, if they had been left to fight it out, it is hard to say. Probably the course of events would have been that the English natives would first have yielded to the northern invaders, and afterwards absorbed them and made them partakers in their civilisation.
RICHMOND, YORKSHIRE A town of considerable importance at the time of the Norman Conquest