Читать книгу The History of Oswestry онлайн

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It will be seen from the foregoing pages that we have abstained from all minute detail in our description of the continued struggles for mastery between the Welsh and their own kindred, as well as of the strife for power and dominion between the Cambrian princes and their foreign invaders. These scenes in the history of Wales are nothing more, to use the eloquent language of Warrington, than “a recital of reciprocal inroads and injuries—a series of objects unvaried and of little importance, which pass the eye in a succession of cold delineations, like the evanescent figures produced by the camera obscura. The characters and events are not brought distinctly into view, nor are they sufficiently explained, to enable the historian to judge of their proportions, their beauty, or defects; whence he can neither develope the principles of action, nor trace the connection of causes with effects, by leading incidents, or by the general springs which govern human affairs.” “The story of our country under its native princes,” observes another impartial writer on Welsh history, “is a wretched calendar of crimes, of usurpations, and family assassinations; and in this dismal detail we should believe ourselves rather on the Bosphorus than the banks of the Dee.” The British or Welsh rulers had doubtless much to complain of against their Roman, Saxon, and Norman invaders; but their own conduct towards their own people—to those who by affinity claimed their protection and regard—was quite as guilty as that of their foreign foes.