When the Roman legions were finally withdrawn, Britain possessed more than fifty walled towns, united by roads with stations upon them; there were also numerous military walled stations. These towns and stations possessed public buildings, baths, and temples, and edifices of considerable grandeur and architectural importance, and their public places were often embellished with statues: one bronze equestrian statue, at least, decorated Lincoln; a bronze statue stood in a temple at Bath; one of the temples at Colchester bore an inscription in large letters of bronze; and Verulam possessed a theatre for dramatic representations, capable of holding some 2,000 or 3,000 spectators. Verulam now presents nothing to the eye but some fields, a church, and a dwelling-house, surrounded by walls overgrown with trees. Colchester, Lincoln, and Bath exhibit few indications of their Roman times; but Chester is richer in these characteristics. The spacious villas which once spread over Roman Britain, are now known to us as from time to time their splendid pavements are laid open under corn-fields and meadows. In a nook of the busy Strand is a Roman bath, of accredited antiquity, its bricks and stucco corresponding with those in the City wall: this bath can be traced to have belonged to the villa of a Leicestershire family, which stood upon this spot,--the north bank of the Thames. In the year 1864, there was discovered on the site of the portico of the East India-house, in Leadenhall-street, the remains of a Roman room, _in situ_ 19 ft. 6 in. below the present surface of the street, and 6 ft. below the lowest foundations of the India-house. The room was about 16 ft. square; the walls built of Roman bricks and rubble; the floor paved with good red tesseræ, but without any ornamental pattern; the walls plastered and coloured in fresco of an agreeable tint, and decorated with red lines and bands. This was a small room, attached to the _atrium_ of a large house, of which near the same spot a large and highly ornamented pavement was found in 1804; the central portion of this pavement is now preserved in the Indian Museum at Whitehall. This was the most magnificent Roman tesselated pavement yet found in London. It lay at only 9-1/2 ft. below the street, and appeared to have been the floor of a room 20 ft. square. In the centre was a Bacchus upon a tiger, encircled with three borders (inflections of serpents, cornucopiæ, and squares diagonally concave), and drinking-cups and plants at the angles. Surrounding the whole was a square border of a bandeau of oak, and lozenge figures, and true lovers' knots, and a 5 ft. outer margin of plain red tiles.