That duty past does wisely now retire,
To end his days in secrecy and peace ;
Druid with Druids, in this chief of groves,
Even in the heart of Mona."

The ex-King rushed to arms, and tempted Fortune, under
adverse omens and against the will of the Druids. There
is reason to believe that Claudius restored him to his home,
if not to his former power ; and probably the brave old man
died, not indeed " in the heart of Mona," but amongst the
Ordovices, after all. One of the finest pictures ever painted
by Tacitus in words is that which shows us the captive
Caradoc standing erect before Caesar, the PrsBtorian bands,
and the trophies which spoke of E»oman triumph. Of all
the British captives, he alone was not abject ; and when he
turned from listening to the compliments of Claudius on his
valour, to salute Agrippina, who sat in state at a tribunal
near to that of her husband, the crowding spectators could
scarcely have told in which spectacle there was the most
cause for wonder, — a woman seated amid the ensigns and
the armies of Bome, or a barbarian King shaking off his
fetters, and rendering her an unembarrassed homage.
Three centuries and a half had elapsed when, in the reign
of Honorius, the Roman force at this extremity of the Em-
pire was withdrawn to defend the provinces, menaced by in-
vasion, nearer to the capital. In the year 420 the enervated
Britons found themselves helpless against Picts and Scots,
and, by the advice of their old Eoman masters, they invited
to their assistance those Sakai-stmce, or Saxons, who were
originally sprung from Asia, and who had fought their way
to the shores of the Q-erman Ocean.
