ROMAN WALLS 



ROME 



In 1727-30 James Thomson published his 

 Seasons, in which for the first time the note 

 of interest in nature reappeared. Gray's Elegy 

 Written in a Country Churchyard, Goldsmith's 

 Deserted Village and Cowper's Task repeated 

 and strengthened the note, and Percy's Re- 

 liques of At <>jlish Poetry, published in 



1765, reawakened that interest in the past which 

 was one of the char features of the 



romantic movement. Milton and Spenser, who 

 had been looked upon as inferior to Pope, 

 came into their own again, and their verse 

 forms, instead of the mechanical couplet form 

 of Pope, were imitated. The romantic move- 

 ment in England reached its height in Scott, 

 Byron. Wordsworth, Shelley and Keats, while 

 in prose Stevenson was perhaps the greatest 

 writer after Scott who emphasized the romantic 

 side. 



In other countries the romantic spirit gained 

 ground just as it had done in England. The 

 German authors Lessing, Herder, Goethe, and 

 the group composed of the Schlegel brothers, 

 Novalis, Tieck and others, stood at the head of 

 the movement in their country, while in France 

 Rousseau, Chateaubriand and Victor Hugo had 

 most to do with the passing of the old classi- 

 cism. 



Consult Phelps' Beginnings of the English Ro- 

 Mantic Movement; Herford's Age of Words- 

 worth. 



ROMAN WALLS, the lines of defensive walls 

 erected by the Romans to protect the northern 

 boundary of Britain from the inroads of the 

 warlike Picts and Scots. Remains of these 

 walls are still to be seen, and they bear striking 

 witness to the permanent character of the -work 



undertaken in ancient days. The first defensive 

 walls were erected by Agricola, about A. D. 80. 

 Of this wall a few traces remain. 



The fortifications running from the River 

 Tyne to the Solway, completely across the 

 northwest part of England, built by Hadrian in 

 A. D. 120 and strengthened later by Severus, ex- 

 tended over eighty miles in length. Parts of 



HADRIAN'S WALL 



The average height at the time of building 

 was the height of three men, one upon the 

 shoulders of another. This wall has crumbled, 

 but in Northumberland are to be found portions 

 which are still twelve feet high. 



the actual wall still remain. In places are still 

 to be seen the stone drinking troughs, the 

 guardhouses and much of the stonework of the 

 huge gateways, with the center stones worn 

 away where the gates once met in closing. 



The Wall of Antoninus, built in A. D. 139 be- 

 tween the rivers Forth and Clyde, marks the 

 northern boundary of the Roman Empire. The 

 Romans could press no further against the 

 valiant Picts and Scots, who waged incessant 

 warfare and were never conquered. 



,OME, the "Eternal City," for many 

 reasons the most interesting of the world's cities. 

 Thousands of years ago, when the ancestors of 

 the English and Americans were living as bar- 



barians in the trackless forests of Northern and 

 Western Europe, it was a great city, and the 

 center of a greater empire; it was the mighty 

 mistress 



