3 SEP A OXFORD IN these Fifty Stories children will become familiar with the chief actors and the most attractive incidents of English History. Being designed for a First Reading-book in History, its aim is not to crowd the mind with facts, but to excite a living interest in men and women whose historical position the pupil will hereafter trace. It is hoped that the subjects of these stories will become fixed points, around which a fuller knowledge of the course of history may gather, so that children meeting with them again in more advanced lesson-books may recognise old friends with whose characters and fortunes they are already familiar. Illustrations have been selected with the same object, and maps have been added that children may be accustomed from the first to link their interest in history with such geographical knowledge as they possess. LA BELLE SAUVAGE YARD, 1884. BATTERING-RAM AND MACHINE FOR HURLING STONES, USED AT THE SIEGE 49 57 995 QUEEN PHILIPPA INTERCEDING FOR THE BURGHERS OF CALAIS (A D. 1347). 84 95 COLUMBUS LANDING IN THE WEST INDIES (A.D. (1492) 100 MARLBOROUGH AT THE BATTLE OF BLENHEIM (A.D. 1704) THE BATTLE OF WATERLOO (A.D. 1815) LIST OF MAPS. SHORES OF THE GERMAN OCEAN (showing Homes of Angles, Saxons, and Danes) MAP OF ENGLAND (Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms and Danish Districts) MAP OF ENGLAND AND FRANCE (12th Century) 1. THE ROMANS (B. c. 55-A.D. 410). 1. In old times, England-or Britain, as it was then called-was a very wild country, covered with vast marshes and forests, which were full of wolves and beasts of prey, and the people who lived in the open country were savages. Their only houses were little huts, not much better than the sties into which we put pigs. They wore scarcely any clothes; but they dyed their flesh with the coloured juices of plants, and when the cold weather came they covered themselves with the skins of wild beasts. 2. Now far away in the south of Europe, in Italy, there was a city called Rome, the capital of the Roman Empire. Rome was the finest city in the world. Many of the houses there were built of marble, and covered inside and out with beautiful carvings and paintings. The Romans had better laws and better soldiers than any other people in the world; and so wherever they |