THE ST. HILARY INSCRIBED STONE. 371 



country was under tlie settled government of the Empire.* This 

 stone was, of course, unknown to Dr. Borlase ; but even without 

 its decisive evidence, he favours the same inference, and says 

 that the fort is situated in a direct line from Truro to Mount's 

 Bay and the Land's End. In fact, this one Roman road, as it 

 will be described, presently in its course through the county, 

 may be said to be fully established, and it is laid down as the 

 only one into the far west by Professor Hiibner. Mr. Whitley 

 has lately marked its course, as an engineer, from point to point. 

 In a recent letter, it is remarked by Preb. Scarth, now fully 

 occupied on the Eoman roads of Somerset, that "the Roman 

 roads in Cornwall need special examination, as in some of the 

 old maps no Eoman roads are marked there at all ! " It must, 

 I think, be admitted that, notwithstanding the large amount of 

 curious investigation and sound inference bearing in the opposite 

 direction, for which Cornish archaeology is indebted to Dr. 

 Borlase, Polwhele, and others, belief in the existence of Eoman 

 roads in our midst has little hold on the educated public ; and 

 yet it may be at least plausibly maintained that all our old and 

 principal roads are essentially Eoman roads. As the strongest 

 reason for believing that the Phoenicians got their tin from 

 Cornwall is the fact that very little of that commodity could be 

 got elsewhere, so the fact that at no period of Cornish history, 

 since the Eoman empire, until modern times has their been in 

 active operation any power adequate to the work of covering the 

 county with a network of roads, makes it at least probable that 

 we must go back to that great road-making people for their 

 original construction. A glance at the early history of the 

 Cornish shews them, long before the coming of the Eomans, as 

 a people civilised by trading intercourse with foreigners, and 

 there is neither evidence nor probability that they made any 

 serious opposition to the Latin forces. On the withdrawal of 

 that firm, but well ordered, government, three or four centuries 

 were passed rather prosperously under their own chiefs, followed 



* It is not meant to assert that Eoman civic life was established in Cornwall 

 in the fulness and luxui'y customary in the Colony ; hut the all but universal use 

 of Latin words and forms in our monumental inscriptions of prte-Saxon date, an 

 use much more general than in other parts of England, and the extensive in 

 corporation of Latin into the old Cornish language, may serve to shew how 

 largely the native mind had been moulded by the rule of Eome. 



