Can you, says I to a senior peasant, for I love to appeal to old age, tell the origin of that building? "No; but we suppose it has been a church. The ruins were much larger in my memory; but they were lately destroyed, to bring the land into that improved state of cultivation in which you see it."--And so you reduced a fortress in four years, which the Britons never could in four hundred. For a trifling profit, you eraze the work of the ancients, and prevent the wonder of the moderns.--Are you apprised of any old walls under the surface? "Yes; the close is full of them: I have broke three ploughs in one day; no tool will stand against them. It has been more expensive to bring the land into its present condition, than the freehold is worth." Why, you seem more willing to destroy than your tools; and more able than time. The works which were the admiration of ages, you bury under ground. What the traveller comes many miles to see, you assiduously hide. What could be the meaning that the Romans erected their station on the declivity of this hill, when the summit, two hundred yards distant, is much more eligible; are there no foundations upon it? "None." The commandry is preferable: the Watling-street runs by it, and it is nearer the Ikenield-street. Pray, are you acquainted with another Roman road which crosses it? "No." Do you know any close about the village, where a narrow bed of gravel, which runs a considerable length, has impeded the plough? "Yes; there is a place, half a mile distant, where, when a child, I drove the plough; we penetrated a land of gravel, and my companion's grandfather told us, it had been an old road."--That is the place I want, lead me to it. Being already master of both ends of the road, like a broken line, with the center worn out, the gravel bed enabled me to recover it. The next station upon the Ikenield-street is Birmingham (Bremenium) I have examined this country with care; but find no vestiges of a station: nor shall we wonder; dissolation is the preserver of antiquity, nothing of which reigns here; the most likely place is Wor-ston (Wall-stone) which a younger brother of Birmingham might afterwards convert into the fashionable moat of the times, and erect a castle. The next station is Alcester (Alauna) all which are nearly at equal distances. In forming these grand roads, a strait direction seems to have been their leading maxim. Though curiosity has lead me to travel many hundred miles upon their roads, with the eye of an enquirer, I cannot recollect one instance, where they ever broke the line to avoid a hill, a swamp, a rock, or a river. They were well acquainted with the propriety of an old English adage, _Once well done is twice done_; an idea new cloathed by Lord Chesterfield, _If a a thing be worth doing at all, it is worth doing well_.