from their trance, and animating each other with the shame of yielding to the impotence of female and fanatical fury, they found the resistance by no means proportioned to the horror and solemnity of the preparations.  These overstrained efforts had, as frequently happens, exhausted the spirits of the men, and stifled that ardor they were intended to kindle.  The Britons were defeated; and Paulinus, pretending to detest the barbarity of their superstition, in reality from the cruelty of his own nature, and that he might cut off the occasion of future disturbances, exercised the most unjustifiable severities on this unfortunate people.  He burned the Druids in their own fires; and that no retreat might be afforded to that order, their consecrated woods were everywhere destroyed.  Whilst he was occupied in this service, a general rebellion broke out, which his severity to the Druids served rather to inflame than allay.

From the manners of the republic a custom had been ingrafted into the monarchy of Rome altogether unsuitable to that mode of government.  In the time of the Commonwealth, those who lived in a dependent and cliental relation on the great men used frequently to show marks of their acknowledgment by considerable bequests at their death.  But when all the scattered powers of that state became united in the emperor, these legacies followed the general current, and flowed in upon the common patron.  In the will of every considerable person he inherited with the children and relations, and such devises formed no inconsiderable part of his revenue:  a monstrous practice, which let an absolute sovereign into all the private concerns of his subjects, and which, by giving the prince a prospect of one day sharing in all the great estates, whenever he was urged by avarice or necessity, naturally pointed out a resource by an anticipation always in his power.  This practice extended into the provinces.  A king of the Iceni[16] had devised a considerable part of his substance to the emperor.  But the Roman procurator, not satisfied with entering into his master’s portion, seized upon the rest,—­and pursuing his injustice to the most horrible outrages, publicly scourged Boadicea, queen to the deceased prince, and violated his daughters.  These cruelties, aggravated by the shame and scorn that attended them,—­the general severity of the government,—­the taxes, (new to a barbarous people,) laid on without discretion, extorted without mercy, and, even when respited, made utterly ruinous by exorbitant usury,—­the farther mischiefs they had to dread, when more completely reduced,—­all these, with, the absence of the legate and the army on a remote expedition, provoked all the tribes of the Britons, provincials, allies, enemies, to a general insurrection.  The command of this confederacy was conferred on Boadicea, as the first in rank, and resentment of injuries.  They began by cutting off a Roman legion; then they fell upon the colonies of Camelodunum and Verulam, and with a barbarous fury butchered the Romans and their adherents to the number of seventy thousand.