And here if we take the word sally-_port_ thus presented to us, and I may add to this also the word _port_-cullis, there are few, I apprehend, except Mr. Round, who would contend that in these instances the word _port_ means a “market town,” and has no reference to “a gate.” Even in the case of the actual word _port-reeve_ itself, Sharon Turner is found giving the word “port” its true meaning when he explicitly states that “the _port_-gerefa, or the gerefa of the _gate_, was witness to all purchases without the _gate_”[27] thus in fact showing how this eminent Saxon historian and scholar read and understood the passage in the Laws of Athelstan. Numerous examples of the same kind might easily be adduced, and I might refer to those given in my former paper, which, like the common occurrence of the term _extra portam_, and similar illustrations of the use of _porta_, Mr. Round seems to have found it convenient to ignore. It is needless, however, to multiply further instances to the same effect. Mr. Round next proceeds to point out that “the markets were held in the _forum_,” “that we should consequently expect the name of a market town to be derived from _forum_ rather than from _porta_,” and that the “_forum_ so far from being at the gate (_porta_) was unquestionably in the very centre of the settlement,” and that “as the markets were in no sense held at the _porta_, we are precluded from deriving port from _porta_”! This unique and somewhat anomalous specimen of argument, together with the unnecessary piece of information as regards the relative situation of the forum and the _porta_, which Mr. Round feels “compelled” to point out in order to correct the error of Professor Stubbs “in identifying ‘port’ with the Latin _porta_,” may all be confidently remitted to the just discrimination of your readers. I would, however, observe with respect to Mr. Round’s remarks on the position of the forum, that it was scarcely necessary for him to go to Silchester and to Cilurnum in exemplification of the well-known fact that the forum was situated in the centre of a Roman town or city. This fact, indeed, is even now amply attested by the lines of conformation discoverable in many of our old borough towns, of which Taunton itself, the town from which I write, affords a very apt and striking illustration.