259 
appointed, of which he is the Hon Secretary, and he is a Member 
of the small Excavation Committee. At the commencement of 
his lecture, Mr. Martin pointed out that he would be unable to 
tell them anything about the work carried on that summer, 
because they had not yet prepared their report, and if they had 
they would have had to take it to London to the Society of 
Antiquaries, who had done so much to assist and support them. 
After briefly recapitulating the leading facts of the Roman occupa- 
tion, he proceeded to show that the generally accepted idea that 
Roman civilisation and institutions were swept clean away by the 
Saxons was not the correct one. In the first place, there were 
Roman cities remaining, in the case of some of which the 
continuity of their life was evident. Secondly, many of the 
so-called Anglo-Saxon institutions were really Roman, under a 
thin disguise. Thirdly, modern research, in which connection he 
mentioned the names of Mr. Grant Allen, and one familiar to 
them all, Dr Beddoe, had shown that the Celtic population of 
Britain, instead of being driven out, remained among the Saxons, 
eyen in the Eastern Counties ; and, fourthly, the extraordinarily 
gradual invasion of the Saxons themselves, who took over 100 
years to reach the neighbourhood of Bath. He told them this 
to show a reason for conducting the explorations, for they were 
not curiosity finders, although, of course, they found relics ; but 
there was another object, which was to obtain a fuller knowledge 
of the history of Rome itself, and for this purpose they should 
study not merely Rome itself, but her rule in her provinces as 
well. Villas, or country houses, had been dug out until he 
: thought they had come to an end of them, for they were now of 
similar types ; but of the Cities they knew little. Silchester, in 
Hampshire, was the first to be excavated, and it had this advan- 
tage: that since the days of the Romans it had been abandoned 
_ but for a few huts, and the very outlines of the place could before 
