Of both towns we are certain that they were prehistoric centres. Not only have the earliest implements of men been discovered in their soil, but it is evident that the prehistoric mode of defence in these islands was used by each--a camp or temporary refuge crowning the hill above the settlement and defended by great circumvallations of earth. Canterbury has the camp in Bigberry Wood; Winchester that upon St. Catherine's Hill. In each town a considerable British population existed before the Roman invasion. In each the coins of British kings struck under the influence of Greek commerce, a century to a century and a half before the Christian era, are to be discovered. The name of each has a British root when it first appears in British history. Canterbury, Durovernum, was the town upon the river bank; and Winchester still preserves the trace of such an origin: the 'Venta' of the Romans: the Celtic 'Gwent'--an open space. Each was Roman; each occupied much the same area; from each radiated a scheme of Roman roads; upon each the history of Roman Britain is silent; each first appears recorded in the story of the pirate invasions and of the conversion of England after the dissolution of the Imperial scheme. Such were the two towns which answered each other like peaks over the rich belt of south England. The one the king's town, the other the primate's; the political and the ecclesiastical capitals of all those natural and dark centuries. By a division common to the history of our ancestors in all parts of Europe, one fell naturally to the Court, the other to the Church. The king in Winchester, the primate in Canterbury, 'like two strong oxen pulled the plough of England.' And each, as was necessary to the period, had its great tomb, but not at the same time. Winchester, the capital, had in the Dark Ages its lamp of sanctity. In the Middle Ages this focus moved to the east--to Canterbury. There could be no rivalry. Winchester created its own saint, St. Swithin, with the murder of à Becket Canterbury put out the light of Winchester and carried on the tradition of a shrine; from that time onwards Winchester declines, while Canterbury survives chiefly as the city of St. Thomas. FOOTNOTES: