The treasures that a few feet of soil cover in Roman art are untold; wheat has grown and cattle have grazed for centuries on many a Roman city or villa. The town of Wroxeter, near Shrewsbury, is lying under rich farming lands, totally hidden from human eye. A few hundred pounds was spent in trying to open up some part, and the wealth of Roman remains and Roman ingenuity and civilisation is astounding. I had occasion to go there while writing the present chapter, and probably few persons who have not visited our own Herculaneum would credit the wealth of Roman art that lies buried at our doors. A small space only has been opened up, and baths, villas, public buildings, and tessellated pavements met the astonished eyes of the explorers. A space of probably 300 acres is still covered up, and conceals we know not what. The history of this premature civilisation of the Romans is absolutely lost. On their leaving the island the great roads and bridges, which the sagacious policy of the rulers always supplied to the colonies, fell into disuse. No longer government property, they were pillaged or neglected, and the towns and villas, quite unsuited to the natives of the island, were left to bats and moles. “Had travellers or maps existed at that early period,” says a very able writer, “they would have afforded us a picture of numerous isolated communities, whose continuous homesteads were surrounded with broad patches of rich corn and pasture, and whose arable and meadow land was fenced in by dark rings of forest, or heaths pastured in common by the herds and flocks of the small republic. No ‘wandering merchant bending beneath his load,’ no adventurous stranger smitten with the desire of roaming from land to land, brought his wares or his tidings to these remote villages.” But we must admit our total ignorance of the condition of England under Roman rule. It certainly was not military only, let the villas with tessellated pavements testify to that. The inhabitants were held no doubt under an iron hand. In some lead mine I once saw in Cardigan, the excavations came across Roman workings; these seem to have been chipped out little by little, and they reach to vast depths and to long levels. The Britons whom they employed must have spent their weary lives in a sort of tunnel, in which it was quite impossible even to kneel, far less to stand; yet some parts of Wales are quite burrowed with these terrible holes. The writer already quoted says, “The historian is involved in inextricable perplexities. The few _civil_ inscriptions we possess speak of Triumvirs, Quatruumvirs, and other municipal or fiscal magistrates. As the personal strength of the soldier degenerates, more care and labour are bestowed on material fortifications. Yet how or why did the Cyclopean walls of Chester or Leicester, or many other sturdy encampments, crumble away before tribes unprovided with the rudest artillery? Into what bottomless undiscernible gulf were precipitated the