Leicester, which became an important Danish centre, the topography of the Roman station was much disturbed, and the church of St Nicholas, the nave of which is probably a little earlier than the Norman conquest, was built within the walls directly in front of the blocked west gate of the city. Towns like Chester, Gloucester, or Chichester, which have preserved the line of their Roman streets with little alteration, are rare; and the continuity of plan does not necessarily prove that there was a similar continuity in the life of the places. On the contrary, the present lay-out of either town shows four streets meeting at an open space or Carfax in the centre of the city: no trace remains above ground of the closed _forum_, which at Silchester and Corstopitum formed the centre of the plan and directed the course of the streets. Silchester, laid waste by Saxon invaders, has shared the fate of Anderida, Othona, and many other once prosperous Romano-British towns. In French history there was no such interruption as the Saxon invasion caused in our own. The consequence is that the chief provincial capitals of to-day, the centres of local government and religion, are and always have been cities of Roman origin, which, although their Latin name has not always been kept, preserve the names of the Gallic tribes amid which they were founded. Reims, Paris, Amiens, Beauvais, Bourges, Le Mans, Tours, Rouen, Sens, Troyes, Chartres, cities which have taken a most prominent place in French history, and contain the most noble monuments of French religious architecture, have an unbroken history from Roman times and even earlier. The cathedrals of Christianised Gaul rose in the centre of the cities: outside the walls, as time went on, rose abbeys like those of Saint-Ouen at Rouen, Saint-Taurin at Evreux, La Couture and Le Pré at Le Mans. The fortresses of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, like the older castle of Rouen, were founded in a corner of the city, possibly on the site of the Roman _arx_ or citadel, of which we have substantial remains in the abandoned Roman station of Jublains (Naeodunum Diablintum). In time the city grew, extending into suburbs far outside the original walls: a suburb sprang up round the neighbouring monastery. The circuit of the walls was extended beyond their old limit. The eastern Roman wall might be broken down, as at Le Mans, where the cathedral was in a corner of the city, to make way for the thirteenth-century quire of the principal church:[23] the defences of the city were here transferred to a new outer ring of wall, the line of which can be seen on the bank of the Sarthe. Within the present extent of such cities the plan of the Roman station can frequently be traced: whatever the vicissitudes of the place may have been, no year has passed in which the chatter of the Vieux-Marché has been silent, or the Grande-Rue has been untrodden daily by busy footsteps. But in English