[23] Quantities of statuettes, pottery, glass cups and vases, arms, utensils of all kinds, sandals, styles for writing, fragments of colossal statues, mosaics, &c., have been found in England, and are preserved in the British Museum and in the Guildhall of London, in the museums of Oxford and of York, in the cloisters at Lincoln, &c. The great room at Bath was discovered in 1880; the piscina is in a perfect state of preservation; the excavations are still going on (1894). [24] "Itinerarium Cambriae," b. i. chap. v. [25] "Ut qui modo linguam abnuebant, eloquentiam concupiscerent: inde etiam habitus nostri honor, et frequens toga; paullatimque discessum et dilinimenta vitiorum, porticus et balnea, et conviviorum elegantiam." Tacitus, "Agricolae Vita," xxi. CHAPTER II. _THE GERMANIC INVASION._ "To say nothing of the perils of a stormy and unknown sea, who would leave Asia, Africa, or Italy for the dismal land of the Germans, their bitter sky, their soil the culture and aspect of which sadden the eye unless it be one's mother country?" Such is the picture Tacitus draws of Germany, and he concludes from the fact of her being so dismal, and yet inhabited, that she must always have been inhabited by the same people. What others would have immigrated there of their own free will? For the inhabitants, however, this land of clouds and morasses is their home; they love it, and they remain there. The great historian's book shows how little of impenetrable Germany was known to the Romans. All sorts of legends were current respecting this wild land, supposed to be bounded on the north-east by a slumbering sea, "the girdle and limit of the world," a place so near to the spot where Phoebus rises "that the sound he makes in emerging from the waters can be heard, and the forms of his steeds are visible." This is the popular belief, adds Tacitus; "the truth is that nature ends there."[26] In this mysterious land, between the forests that sheltered them from the Romans and the grey sea washing with long waves the flat shores, tribes had settled and multiplied which, contrary to the surmise of Tacitus, had perhaps left the mild climate of Asia for this barren country; and though they had at last made it their home, many of them whose names alone figure in the Roman's book had not adopted it for ever; their migrations were about to begin again.