156 



So the first 600 years is but a chapter ia our life passed. 

 It is an agricultural chapter, and if you want to go back into the 

 Saxon period you have only to walk out into the lanes and by-ways 

 of our remote villages and there you may find all you want for 

 essentials in the Saxon period. S'nce that time we have had 

 two great periods ; we have had the period in which we formed 

 our municipalities, and then Ave have had since that the period 

 of our great manufactures and our Colonies, and these second 

 and third periods have tended to shut out from our view that 

 great and important Saxon period which is after all the solid 

 basis of our national history. Now Bath is a spot in which one 

 might be naturally led to ask whether there are any remains of 

 this period. There are many reasons why one should look to 

 Bath as one of a very small number of spots in which you 

 might expect to find traces of the Saxon period, other j^laces 

 which might rank with it, but hardly above it, would be such as 

 Canterbury, or York, or Winchester for various historical reasons. 

 I feel that there are very few places that a student acquainted 

 with Saxon periods and literature, on coming to England from a 

 foreign country to try to see what he could see in England, would 

 be more likely to visit with curiosity than the neighbourhood of 

 Bath. For consider, it was first of all a Eoman city, and so 

 was one of those places which was attacked by the Saxons very 

 early. It was destroyed by the Saxons in the year 577 after the 

 battle of DjTham, as recorded in the Chronicle ; but it was 

 not occupied by the Saxons, they were not fond of city life. 

 They destroyed cities because cities contained populations that 

 were hostile to them and they could not live peaceably by them. 

 This city of Bath must have laid for 100 to 200 years in a 

 state of desolation — a vast city of stones and buildings, but 

 without inhabitants — and the proofs of this are very various, and 

 have been remarked upon independently by different observers 

 and discoverers. That period was even the subject of a record 

 in the shape of an ancient poem preserved in the Exeter book — 



