The kindly earth covers up and preserves many precious secrets,--“underground,” says Rabelais, “are all great treasures and wonderful things,”--to be revealed at some fitting time, when men’s minds shall be prepared to receive them. The earth preserves, for instance, the history of the ancient world--witness the revelations in our own time of the cuneiform tablets and the vast extension of the historic age: the arts of the ancient world, and their houses, and their manner of life--witness the revelations of Pompeii. Applied to Thorney, excavation has shown--what we certainly never could have known otherwise--that here, of all places in the world, in this little secluded islet in the midst of marshes (the most unlikely spot, one would think, in the whole of Britannia), there was a Roman station, and one of considerable importance. The first hint of this fact was suggested when there was dug up in the North Green of the Abbey, in the year 1869, a fine Roman sarcophagus inscribed with the name of Valerius Amandinus. The lid has a cross upon it, from which it has been conjectured that the sarcophagus was used twice, its second occupant having been a Christian. What reason, however, is there for supposing that Valerius Amandinus himself was not a Christian?--for, at least a century before the withdrawing of the Legions, Roman Britain was wholly Christian. For more than two centuries Christians had been numerous. During the fourth century the country was covered with monastic foundations for monks and nuns. Christian or not, there stands the sarcophagus of Valerius Amandinus, for all the world to see, at the entrance of the Chapter-house; and why a Roman cemetery should be established in Thorney no one could guess. But some ten years ago there was a second discovery. In digging a grave under the pavement of the nave, there was found a mosaic floor in very fair condition. This must have belonged to a Roman villa. But, if one villa, why not more? The question has been settled by the discovery, of late years, wherever the ground on Thorney has been opened, of Roman bricks and fragments of Roman buildings. It is now impossible to doubt the existence here of a Roman station. That is, so far, the (unfinished) evidence of excavation. But why did the Romans place a station, an important station, on this bit of a bramble-covered eyot, with a shallow river in front and a marshy backwater behind? What strategic importance could be attached to such a spot? The next branch of evidence will serve to answer the question. 3. _Evidence of Ancient Monuments._ There are here none of those shapeless mounds of ancient ruins which are found elsewhere--as in Egypt. Nor are there any foundations above ground, as at Silchester. Yet there is one fact of capital importance, which not only serves to explain why the Romans established a station on Thorney, but also illustrates, as we shall see, many other facts in the history of the island. It is this: