But what is Caerleon now? Late on an August afternoon, when the sky was stricken with the first shadowy pallor of evening, a white, sandy, deserted lane led me past a few scattered houses and a small church to the riverside. The tide was out and the waters had shrunk almost into silence. An old tower, thickly overgrown with trailing weeds, stands on the bank, and tells of other times. The fields stretching away from the right bank of the Usk are irregularly divided by the remnant of an old Roman wall, rising about twelve feet, and supposed to have been originally four miles long, connecting Caerleon with the outposts. Antiquaries differ in opinion as to whence the stone was obtained; those marvel-working Romans who came over with Julius Frontinus in the first century, and made Caerleon the head-quarters of the second Augustan Legion, left the secret buried in the monument they raised. The wall passes by, and beyond, the Priory and the Round Table Field, where a deep indentation probably marks the site of a Roman amphitheatre. This supposition derives circumstantial confirmation from the fact that a contiguous field has borne from time out of record the name of the Bearhouse Field--the site of the house in which wild beasts were kept for gladiatorial contests. But legend floats about the scene and fantastically shapes itself into a marvellous tale, that here King Arthur with his knights sits entranced in a subterranean chamber, and there will remain until Britain in her hour of peril calls him forth to new and greater conquests. The Welsh bards have sung how-- “He first ordained the circled board; The knights whose martial deeds far-famed that Table Round, Which truest in their loves, which most in arms renowned, The laws which long upheld that Order, they report: The Pentecosts prepar’d at Caerleon in her Court, That Table’s ancient seat.”