Among other marks of progress is an inscribed tablet with an inscription which one authority declares to be the record of a "cure from either taking the waters or bathing, certified by three great men;" while another is equally positive that it is an "imprecation upon nine men, supposed to be guests, who had stolen a tablecloth at the conclusion of a dinner-party." The age of this tablet is fixed "between the second and fifth centuries of the Christian era," which in itself seems to be a wide enough margin. As if, however, this were not already sufficient, there are others, learned in these things, who declare that this relic records how a certain Quintus received 500,000 lbs. of copper coin for washing a lady named "Vilbia"! We are left to take our choice between speculations unfavourable to the personal cleanliness of that lady, or astonishment at the mode and extravagance of the payment. There is, indeed, "another way," as the cookery books have it; but as that involves doubts about the scholarship of professed antiquaries, this third resort may only be hinted at in this place. Who shall decide where antiquaries disagree? The Saxons were shy of the places they had burnt. Heathens that they were, they generally believed the bloodstained ruins to be haunted by evil spirits, and so built their settlements at some distance away. The site of Bath seems to have been, to some degree, an exception. After lying waste for over a hundred years, it was occupied again, for the fame of its waters had not wholly died out: and "Akemanceaster," as the Saxons called it, entered upon a new lease of life. At that period, too, the Roman Road through Silchester, Speen, and Marlborough acquired its name of Akeman Street; the names meaning, as some would say, the "Sick Man's Town," and the "Sick Man's Road," from "aches" and the fame of the place, even then, as a spot at which to cure them. This has been characterized as absurd, and the derivation more plausibly held to be from a corruption of the Roman word _Aquæ_ affixed to the word "maen," or "man," meaning "stone" or "place," and joined to the word "cæster," a form of the Roman "castrum," a fortification; the compound word thus obtained meaning "the Fortified place at the Waters." [Sidenote: _ROYAL VISITS_]