BOADICEA.

I WISH to avoid all affectation of being curious in a matter of so little consequence as the correct and best spelling of this woman's name, which may be met with in a great variety of forms. Boadicea, Bouduca, Bonduca, Boundouica, and so on; all of them perhaps far off from her ancient British designation, and I have therefore adopted a very common spelling. We have a striking and faithful portrait-for such it may without much difficulty be admitted to be of the warlike Queen of the Iceni in the reign of Nero-a queen who, at the head of her countrymen, captured from the Romans

two of their towns lying on the banks of the Thames, and in the neighbourhood of London. For this portrait we are indebted to the picturesque Dion Cassius, living sufficiently near her time to have collected his specific description of her person and address from the Romans, whose possession of Britain had been threatened and endangered by her valour and patriotism.

When Boadicea appeared at the head of her army, she is described as of gigantic stature, of a beautiful figure, a terrible aspect, and a sharp voice; with yellow hair, which fell in rich profusion down to her thighs. She wore round her neck a large golden collar or chain, and about her body a robe of variegated colours, twisted into folds, and over this a thick, heavy mantle or cloak. As she addressed her countrymen, she brandished in her hand a spear, in order to excite them to valour.*

The Roman historians, who have described the terrible vengeance which the heroic widow of Prasutagus took on the inhabitants of the

* Dion, "Hist." lib. LXII, p. 701.

Roman cities which fell into her hands, have not disguised her terrible wrongs, and the wrongs of her husband and her race. Prasutagus had made the emperor the heir of his great wealth-great it is called by Tacitus, it is to be presumed with reference to what might be expected of a British prince in that age-in the hope of averting the Roman hostility, and securing the quiet possession of his own dominions. His kingdom was ravaged, his palace pillaged, as if he had been a conquered foe; his relatives were made slaves, his wife, the heroic Boadicea, was scourged, and her daughters were ravished.*

The fate of Prasutagus is not noticed by historians. After the events which I have mentioned, Boadicea appears as the Queen of the Iceni and the leader of the army, and her abilities in both capacities are spoken of with respect.

Both Tacitus and Dion give the former briefly and the latter at some length-a speech which they represent Boadicea to have delivered * Tacitus, "Annales," lib. xiv, c. 31.

to her countrymen. The eloquent address which Dion puts into her mouth is no doubt, in the main, the composition of his own closet, yet he may have had information or recent tradition of the substance of what she said. It abounds in eloquent passages, and warlike as it is, it is yet pervaded by a womanly spirit. Dion makes her draw a contrast between the simple lives of her countrymen and the vices of Rome, and it is drawn with much beauty. The sighing after a simple and savage life is characteristic of ages of over-refinement and vicious cultivation.

In early and rude ages when poets, writing in refined times, would have us to believe that men employed themselves in lying on the banks of rivers and under the shades of trees, playing on pipes and sighing out their souls in love, while the women, on their part, were similarly disengaged and similarly subjected to all the softer and sweeter influences, the real occupation of the men, in which they were often heartily joined by the women, if any reliance is to be placed in the songs of contemporary bards, was fighting

battles, cutting throats, giving and taking of hard blows and knocks, and kicks and cuffs, besides abusing each other vehemently with their tongues, and telling and swearing to all manner of horrible lies, and taking every possible advantage of each other. Such is the true picture of early and primitive times, and such are the subjects of the first records of all nations, of the songs of all really ancient poets. It is amidst the corruption and decline of overcivilized states, in the most sophisticated and artificial and unpoetical condition of society, in the atmosphere of courts and palaces, that men begin to dream of the existence of a happy pastoral life beyond the boundaries of wicked cities; and that poets over their claret set about describing as a reality what never had and never can have an existence except in poets' brains.

These visions will steal gently over the soul of even the blood-stained murderer. In the midst of his terrible proscriptions, Sylla sighed to leave Rome, and longed for the simple enjoyment of his rural cot, his country diversions,