10 . ROMAN ROADS. 



of Worcester ours was probably a specula, or watch- 

 hill, of the larger kind. We can yet trace, though at 

 places but obscurely, the roads that connected this en- 

 campment with other posts in adjoining villages. A few 

 years sweep away commonly all traces of roads of later 

 periods, and the testimony of some old man is often re- 

 quired to substantiate that one had ever been in exist- 

 ence within the memory of a life ; yet these uniting 

 roads, which, as works, must have been originally in- 

 significant, little more than by-ways, after disuse for 

 above fourteen hundred years, and encountering all the 

 erasements of time, inclosures, and the plow, are yet 

 manifest, and an evidence of that wonderful people, 

 thieves and ruffians though they were, who constructed 

 them. There is probably no region on the face of the 

 globe ever colonized, or long possessed, by this nation, 

 which does not yet afford some testimony of their having 

 had a footing on it ; this people, who, so long before 

 their power existed, it was predicted, should be of "a 

 fierce countenance, dreadful, terrible, strong exceed- 

 ingly, with great iron teeth that devoured and broke in 

 pieces," 



where'er thy legions camp'd, 



Stern sons of conquest, still is known, 



By many a grassy mound, by many a sculptured stone. 



Almost every Roman road that I have observed ap- 

 pears to have been considerably elevated above the sur- 

 rounding soil, and hence more likely to remain apparent 

 for a length of time than any of those of modern con- 

 struction, which are flat, or with a slight central con- 

 vexity ; the turf, that in time by disuse would be formed 

 over them, would in .one case present a grassy ridge, in 

 the other be confounded with the adjoining land. 



Coins of an ancient date, I think, have not been found 

 here;* nor do we possess any remains of warlike edi- 

 fices, or religious endowments. Our laborers have at 



* Some money was found in one of our fields a few years past, 

 which fame, as in all such cases, without perhaps any foundation, 

 enlarged to a considerable sum. The nature of the coin I know not. 

 A few old guineas were admitted ; but from fear of that spectre 

 " tresor trove," the whole was concealed, whatever it might be. 



