KS. eT 
119 
These details will have tired you. May I venture, in conclusion, to bring 
before your ‘‘ mind’s eye,” if I may use the expression, one or two scenes of the 
olden day. But first, just consider how long it really is since these Roman times. 
T have lived in this house about 35 years. Now as the Romans were here 1,600 
years ago, it would require a succession of fifty men as old as I am to have lived 
one after the other, to reach up to the olden time we are speaking of. And when 
you have in imagination thrown yourselves back sixteen centuries, just think of 
the difference—the city population crowded together in houses within the walls, 
only the temples and the governor’s house with space around them; while between 
the walls and houses a broad and open street ran round the city. This can be 
proved. Can you not imagine in peaceful times the citizens walking round the 
walls, from which the view of a Roman villa here and there in the neighbourhood 
broke the monotony of the dense wood on the hills? And, if youlike to carry your 
imagination still further, \fancy for one moment the excitement attending the 
arrival of the vessel from Abone (now Sea-mills-on-the-Avon), bringing supplies 
for the garrison from that more settled province! Can you not imagine that you 
see the vessel gliding slowly with the rising tide, just kept in mid-stream by an 
occasional dip of the single bank of oars ? 
All this you will say is fancy. I will conclude with giving you another 
scene, which is not fancy. The Romans were great brick and tile-makers. Now, 
at Venta Silurum, or Caerwent, there was a great tile-yard; and ‘‘once on a 
time,” as the novelists say, the military overlooker walked out to see how ‘“‘the 
work went on.” The day was hot, the man was lazy, and, instead of going round 
the brickyard he crossed over the bricks, still not dry, and he left the impres- 
sion of his nailed sandals upon them. Here is one—the actual impress of a Roman 
soldier’s sandal sixteen hundred years ago. But this is not all. He wanted some- 
thing to do when he rested on one side of the brickyard, and in a fit of idleness he 
scribbled his own name again and again on one of the large tiles. Here is the tile. 
His name, Bellicianus, has thus, by his idle fit, become immortalised amongst the 
descendants of what he then considered a barbarian tribe. This is no fancy : it is 
an actual account of what must have happened. And surely there is—there must 
be—a great interest in looking back thus for centuries, and seeing, as it were, the 
actual events of those times. History gives them, it is true: but archeology paints 
them as in a picture; and, though not so really important as any of the exact or 
the natural sciences, yet it is undoubtedly of the greatest importance as a hand- 
maid to history. 
