^ HILL-TOP STRONGHOLD. 253 



above often bear witness to our own tlay to tbe original 

 Bite of the antique settlement upon the high places. 



One can mark, too, various stages in this gradual 



process of secular descent from the wind-swept hills into 



the valleys below, as freer communications and greater 



security made access to water, roads, and rivers of greater 



importance than mere defence or elevated position. At 



Bath, for example, it was the Pax Romana that brought 



down the town from the stoclcaded height of Caer Badon, 



and the Hill of Solisbury to the ford and the hot springs 



ill the valley of the Avon. At Old Sarum, on the other 



hand, the hill-top town remained much longer : it lived 



from the Celtic first into the Eoman and then into the 



West Saxon world ; it had a cathedral of its own in 



Norman times ; and even long after Bishop Roger Poore 



founded the New Sarum, which we now call Salisbury, 



at the point where the great west road passed the river 



below, the hill-top town continued to bo inhabited, and, 



a? everybody knows, when all its population had finally 



dwindled away, retained some vestige of its ancient 



importance by returning a member of its own for a single 



farmhouse to the unreformed Parliament till '32. As for 



Fiesole, though Florence has long since superseded it as 



the capital of the Arno Valley, the town itself still lives 



on to our ow^n time in a dead-alive way, and, like Norman 



Old Sarum, retains even now its beautiful old cathedral, 



its Palazzo Pretorio, and its acknowledged claims to 



ancient boroughship. In England, I know by personal 



experience only one such hill-top town of the antique 



sort still surviving, and that is Shaftsbury ; but I am 



told that Launceston, with its strong castle overlooking 



