24 Bath during British Independence. 



was more or less disseminated and accepted, though it is 

 hard to define the degree of progress it may have made. 

 We must remember that for nearly a hundred years past 

 Christianity had been the recognized religion of the Em- 

 pire, and that heathen temples had been demolished or 

 turned into Christian churches by imperial edict. The 

 temples of which we see the fragments in the Museum may 

 perhaps owe their demolition not to Christians, whether 

 Roman or British, but to the indiscriminate ravages of the 

 Saxon invaders. It is quite possible that Christian assem- 

 blies may have been familiar with the interior of those 

 buildings for some two hundred and fifty years before the 

 fatal date of 577. On the other hand it is quite possible 

 that the Gospel still maintained a struggling existence in 

 the face of old superstitions, and that when the natives 

 were delivered from the law of the Empire, the quarrels 

 which convulsed the land had their origin in religious 

 differences. 



As to their language, there is no doubt that the language 

 of Aquae at this time was Latin, and that everything was in 

 a fair way to lay the foundation of a Romanesque nation, 

 like the French. There existed no other public language 

 here at that time, as the language of administration, of law, 

 of commerce. All educated people spoke and wrote Latin ; 

 indeed everyone who had any pretensions whatever. Such 

 was the language of the city, at least in regard to the whole 

 of the more respectable citizens. 



Of the inferior grades of the population, the masses in the 

 city, and the agricultural population (largely slaves) in the 

 country, it is not so easy to speak with certainty. That 

 their speech was much latinized, there can be no doubt; 

 the only question is, how much of the original British speech 



