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. Roman walls, we all know, were too strongly built to fall down, and various circumstances combined for their preservation. In the first place, the population of the country must have been greatly reduced, and this part of the island especially was probably very thinly inhabited after it had been ravaged by the invaders. The ruins themselves would in time be overgrown with plants and trees and would become the haunt of wild beasts, which were then abundant, thus offering very little encouragement to anybody to enter them. But they were protected in a still greater degree by the strong superstitious feelings with which such ruins were regarded by the people who now occupied the land. The Teutonic invaders had not only a prejudice against towns in general, but they believed that all the deserted buildings of the previous lords of the soil were taken possession of by powerful evil spirits, on whose limits it was in the highest degree dangerous to trespass. They imagined, moreover, that the Romans had the power of casting spells over buildings, which were no less dangerous than the evil spirits themselves. It will be remembered how, when Augustine and his brother missionaries came to convert the Anglo-Saxons to Christianity, the Kentish king and his court gave them their first audience in the open air; because, as we are told, the Anglo-Saxons were afraid that, should they be received in a covered chamber in the palace, the strangers from Rome would be able to cast a spell upon them. It is a remarkable proof of the strength of this superstitious feeling, that all the Benedictionals of the Anglo-Saxon period contain forms for blessing the vessels of metal or earthenware found in ancient sites, and relieving them from the spells which had been cast upon them by the “pagans,” in order that the finders might be enabled to make use of these vessels without any personal danger. When the people of the middle ages, whether Christians or not, found the beautiful bronze figures on which we set so much store, they were in the greatest apprehension of personal danger until they had mutilated them so as to break the charm or spell which they believed to be laid upon them, for they looked upon these images as the more general instruments of the ancient magicians. When thus mutilated they usually threw them into the nearest river. The numerous bronzes dredged up from the bed of the Thames at London are almost all mutilated in this manner. This was the case also with the inscriptions, for the successors of the Romans had no other notion of an ancient inscription than that it was a magical charm. This superstition has continued to exist until very recent times, for it appears that, within the memory of man, the peasantry of Northumberland, on the line of the