More recently, the investigation of the ruins of the Roman city of Uriconium, at Wroxeter, near Shrewsbury, has presented us with a scene for our special wonder. The earliest antiquarian report of this interesting spot will be found in the _Philosophical Transactions_ for the year 1701, where Lyster has described a Roman sudatory, or hypocaustum, discovered in Wroxeter in that year. It is strange that so important a locality should have remained unexplored during a century and a half of archæological research. The present is the first instance in which there has been in this country the chance of penetrating into a city of more than fourteen centuries ago, on so large a scale, and with such extensive remains of its former condition; where the visitor may walk over the floors which had been trodden last, before they were thus uncovered, by the Roman inhabitants of this island. Giants are frequently associated with ruins and ancient relics in the legends of Shropshire.[11] In the history of the Fitzwarines we are given to understand that the ruined Roman city of Uriconium, which we are now exploring at Wroxeter, had been taken possession of by the giants. The city is mentioned by the geographer Ptolemy to have been standing here as early as the beginning of the second century, when it was called Viroconium, a name which appears to have been changed in the later Romano-British period to Uriconium. The line of the ancient town-wall forms an irregular oval more than three miles in circumference, on the Watling-street road, which occupies the line of one of the principal streets of the old city. The only portion of the buildings above ground is upwards of twenty feet high, seventy-two feet long, and three feet thick, and is a solid mass presenting those unmistakeable characteristics of Roman work--the long string courses of large flat red bricks. This "Old Wall" stands nearly in the centre of the ancient city, which occupied the highest ground within the walls--a commanding position, with the bold isolated form of the Wrekin in the rear, and in front a panorama of mountains formed by the Wenlock and Stretton Hills, Caer Caradoc, the Longwynd, the Breidden, and the still more distant mountains of Wales. With the exception of this wall, all the remains of the Roman city had long been buried beneath the soil, when, in February 1859, the excavation of the remains was commenced by public subscription. In one of the plundering invasions by the Picts and Scots, Uriconium is thought to have perished, towards the middle of the fifth century, by fire, and such of the inhabitants as were not massacred were dragged away into captivity. Thus the town was left an extensive mass of blackened walls; and such was the condition in which the ruined Roman towns remained during several centuries. The ruins would in time be overgrown with plants and trees, and would become the haunt of wild beasts, which were then abundant. Thus Uriconium stood