* * * * * Under Roman rule Britain as a whole prospered exceedingly. Agriculture and commerce were extended, so that we find the lead-merchants of Derby exporting lead to Italy, the chalk-merchants of Tadcaster exporting chalk, and the corn-merchants of the Rhine provinces importing corn from Britain in large quantities. But beside the export of lead and chalk and corn, another export of trade was going on—the export of the warlike youth of the country, who went to furnish with men the Roman armies in Spain and Gaul and Germany. Those left at home were forbidden by law to carry arms; so there is small wonder that when the Roman legions were withdrawn from Britain Roman towns were sacked and burnt, and Roman civilisation blotted out by hostile invaders. ‘Tragedies can still be guessed at from heaps of ashes and from skeletons of men, women and children found ... in crouching attitudes in hypocausts and other places of concealment; and the human bones frequently discovered at the bottoms of wells ... enable us to see the ruthless savage removing the traces of a murderous raid.’ Petuaria, Praetorium, Derventio—all were sacked and burnt by the hosts of ENGLE who sailed up the Humber and the Derwent, or landed at Bridlington Bay. Roman houses were generally one-storied buildings roofed with tiles or thatch, and the destruction of a town by fire would be complete. It was also, in most cases, lasting; for the destroyers were men who cared not for a life passed within walls and fortifications. ‘They liked better to hear the lark sing than the mouse squeak.’ So the Roman cities, towns and camps ‘remained in ruins, to be haunted by the owl and the fox.’ But an exception was made by the invaders in the case of the greatest of the Roman cities. Eboracum, Londinium and Lindum Colonia became the chief centres of life for the tribes that captured them; and thus the EBORACUM of the Romans became the EOFERWIC[6] of the Angles—a dwelling-place in the haunts of the wild boar. Smaller towns were blotted out; and their sites are known to us only by the finding of the family store of coins, or the personal treasures once placed for safety in a little recess in the wall or buried in a vase under the floor—to be overwhelmed with debris, and to remain undiscovered for many centuries. Footnote 6: Pronounced almost as _Yóv-er-wik_. * * * * *