Armour In England

It is the nature of islands to exhibit some peculiarities in their fauna and flora, and this insularity is no less pronounced in the manners and customs of the human beings inhabiting them. Thus even the stone implements of Britain of remote prehistoric days can readily be distinguished by the expert; and we have the authority of Sir John Evans for regarding our types of bronze celts and weapons as both peculiar and indigenous. On first taking a place in history several strange and extra-European customs were noticed in these isles by Cæsar, such as the use of chariots in war, and dyeing the skin blue with woad: British nations were, moreover, frequently ruled by queens, and some practised the rare and difficult, and very far from barbaric, art of enamelling on bronze.
Modern opinion is at present opposed to the theory that the culture and civilisation of Western Europe originated exclusively in the East, and is inclined to regard our primitive arts and crafts as indigenous. That this must in a large measure be true appears sufficiently established; but the large and excellently-made bronze bucklers with concentric rings of bosses or studs, called the clypeus, the singular art of enamelling, the use of studs of coral for embellishing weapons and trinkets, the chariots of war and the government by women, all so remote from savagery, and so intimately connected with Eastern civilisation, compel the belief that these isles did actually at some distant time possess a privileged and intimate communication with the East. The old and rooted tradition of a direct traffic in tin between Britain and Phœnicia cannot yet in fact be safely abandoned.