265 



existence of them was unknown until they were restored to 

 knowledge by the labours of the modern archeeologist. I need only 

 mention Wroxeter and Silchester. We might of course suppose 

 that there were peculiar local causes which operated to the dis- 

 advantage of these particular places, and made them to be neglected. 

 But against this explanation we may set the general fact that the 

 Gothic races differed from the Romans whom they conquered in this 

 respect, that they preferred the country to the town. Municipal 

 habits and tastes had not yet been formed by them. Town life 

 was to them as unnatural as it is to the Arab of the desert. And 

 great as was the desolation that ensued throughout the fairest parts 

 of Europe, there is reason to believe that nowhere was the 

 destruction of the municipal civilisation more complete than in our 

 own island. The way in which the poet of The Wanderer (another 

 of the pieces in this same Exeter manuscript) speaks incidentally of 

 the frequency and familiarity of ruins, is very striking : 



" It becomes a wise man to consider, how weird it wUl be, when all this 

 world's wealth is desolate, as now frequently up and down the world we see 

 wind-waven walls stand studded with rime," &c. 



Then follows a description much like the contemplative 

 expressions in this poem, which are merely of a general ruin- 

 picturing kind. Here then we seem to have sufficient evidence of the 

 general desertion of the Roman cities. In process of time the 

 national habits were modified, and they began to form towns or 

 reoccupy old sites ; and to this they were in many cases driven by 

 the need of security at the time of the Danish invasions. And we can 

 cite at least one example of a Roman city which is now populous, but 

 which was desolate in the ninth ccutury. We have the clearest in- 

 formation that Chester was a deserted city in the year 894, when for a 

 moment it is illuminated by the light of history. Hence the name 

 which it for a long time bore, namely, Westchester. This did not 

 mean Chester in the Western quarter, but the Chester which was 

 waste. And though the pi-efix has been omitted in modern times, 

 yet the mere name of Chester exhibits still an effect of the deserted 

 period, in so far as it differs from its old name of Legaceaster, 

 which represented Castrum Legionum. It has, in fact, formed a 

 new proper name out of the Saxon common-noun ceaster. A still 



