298 “te Vale of Warminster. 
a dlacker tint than elsewhere. In such places, he says, on turning 
up the soil will be found convincing proofs of ancient residence, 
such as animal bones, pottery, brick tiles, and coins of the lower 
empire. Such are the certain marks which led him to call them 
old British settlements. 
The same marks which guided Sir R. C. Hoare are still left upon 
the surface of the same downs to guide other inquirers. And there 
is, really and truly, no information to be obtained about these things 
except what the greener grass, the blaeker soil, the pottery, and the 
coins, ean themselves tell us. 
Sir R. C. Hoare, in his magnificent volumes upon Ancient 
Wiltshire, gives us a description of no less than forty-eight different 
places, all over the Wiltshire Downs, where he has found these 
marks of ancient habitation: and this, without including any 
military encampment. 
Whether the people lived in these places permanently, or merely 
only for a part of the year—I should suppose the latter, on account 
of water—one cannot say. I believe that to this day in Wales they 
go up into the mountains for the sake of summer pastures, and 
remain there till cold weather returns. It may have been the case 
that when so much of the country under the hills was forest, as it 
was to a very great extent, there was no other place to live in. 
Very likely they lived, as Cesar reports, by hunting and ranging 
wherever they chose. Digging and spade-work they hated, and 
therefore they are not likely, I think, to have made the terraces 
(above-mentioned) for cultivation, though some people think they did. 
In course of time they vanished, and the Vale of Warminster, 
like all the rest of the country, must have passed into the hands of 
some settled despotic authority, at some very remote period indeed, 
in order to be brought into shape, manageable by civilized and 
social rights ; in fact, into the shape, as to subdivision into parishes, 
which we have at this day. When exactly that was done is lost in 
obscurity, but whoever he was that had the power of dividing it, was a 
very good carver. He carved fairly. If he had a loin of mutton for 
dinner I will answer for it that he did not cut it in the selfish, unfair 
way; helping himself and two or three particular friends to slices 
