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brief observations, mainly gathered from Mr Fox’s paper, and 
a notice which appeared in the Times on the subject. 
The situation is well chosen, being on elevated table-land, 
occupying about 100 acres. When Lord Jeffrey visited it many 
years ago, he wrote :— 
‘Tt is the most striking thing I ever saw, and the effect of 
that grand stretch of shaded wall, with its antique 
roughness and over-hanging wood, lighted by a low, 
autumnal sun, and the sheep and cattle feeding on the. 
green solitude at its foot, made a picture not soon 
to be forgotten.” 
Now much of the old city, which was covered up at the 
time Lord Jeffrey wrote, has been laid bare, and the plan of the 
principal buildings, characteristic of a Roman town, as the 
Forum, the Basilica, the lines of streets, and basements of the 
houses, can be clearly followed. The Gates are most interesting 
as they are the only ones of a Romano-British City which have 
been thoroughly investigated, and the Gate of the West shows 
a striking resemblance to the Stations of Cilwrnum (Chester’s) 
and Ambloganna (Birdoswald) on the Roman wall. 
The great eastern gateway, being the main exit to the 
- London road, fell back in a curve from the wall abcut 9 feet, 
: within the thickness of which were guard rooms, and the 
_ opening measured 28 ft. 6 in., wide enough for two chariots to 
pass each other abreast. Outside the walls there was a fosse, 
or ditch, of about 100 ft. in width ; and therefore it must have 
_ been a strong fortress. There is a Museum on the ground, in 
_ which everything of interest is carefully placed, to be ultimately 
_ removed to the one at Reading. An inspection of the museum 
_ revealed the articles used by the Romans in their every-day life, 
as Samian ware, lamps, grid-iron, or portable cooking stove, 
 scale-beam, axes, hammers, gouges, chisels, plough coulters, 
_ blacksmith’s anvil, tongs, files, rasp, a so-called hippo-sandal, 
_ carpenter’s plane, pins of bone and bronze, an iron stylus, 
fragments of glass vessels, querns, bones of the horse, ox (bos 
~ longifrons), sheep or goat, of the pig very abundant, and of the 
