"It is a fair sight."
"It may be a fair sight in a Roman's eyes, Beric, but nought could
be fouler to those of a Briton. To me every one of those blocks of
brick and stone weighs down and helps to hold in bondage this land
of ours; while that temple they have dared to rear to their gods,
in celebration of their having conquered Britain, is an insult and
a lie. We are not conquered yet, as they will some day know to
their cost. We are silent, we wait, but we do not admit that we
are conquered."
"I agree with you there. We have never fairly tried our strength
against them. These wretched divisions have always prevented our
making an effort to gather; Cassivelaunus and some of the Kentish
tribes alone opposed them at their first landing, and he was
betrayed and abandoned by the tribes on the north of the Thames. It
has been the same thing ever since. We fight piecemeal; and while
the Romans hurl their whole strength against one tribe the others
look on with folded hands. Who aided the Trinobantes when the
Romans defeated them and established themselves on that hill? No
one. They will eat Britain up bit by bit."
"Then you like them no better for having lived among them, Beric?"
"I like them more, but I fear them more. One cannot be four years
among them, as I was, without seeing that in many respects we might
copy them with advantage. They are a great people. Compare their
splendid mansions and their regular orderly life, their manners and
their ways, with our rough huts, and our feasts, ending as often
as not with quarrels and brawls. Look at their arts, their power
of turning stone into lifelike figures, and above all, the way in
which they can transfer their thoughts to white leaves, so that
others, many many years hence, can read them and know all that was
passing, and what men thought and did in the long bygone. Truly it
is marvellous."
