The following text is from George Eliot’s 1860 novel The Mill on the Floss.
The narrator is describing the fictional town of St. Ogg’s, located in a part of Great Britain that was occupied by Romans and subsequently by Vikings in the ancient past. It is one of those old, old towns which impress one as a continuation and outgrowth of nature, as much as the nests of the bower-birds or the winding galleries of the white ants; a town which carries the traces of its long growth and history like a millennial tree, and has sprung up and developed in the same spot between the river and the low hill from the time when the Roman legions turned their backs on it from the camp on the hillside, and the long-haired sea-kings came up the river and looked with fierce, eager eyes at the fatness of the land.
The narrator is describing the fictional town of St. Ogg’s, located in a part of Great Britain that was occupied by Romans and subsequently by Vikings in the ancient past. It is one of those old, old towns which impress one as a continuation and outgrowth of nature, as much as the nests of the bower-birds or the winding galleries of the white ants; a town which carries the traces of its long growth and history like a millennial tree, and has sprung up and developed in the same spot between the river and the low hill from the time when the Roman legions turned their backs on it from the camp on the hillside, and the long-haired sea-kings came up the river and looked with fierce, eager eyes at the fatness of the land.