ROMAN ROADS. 
10 
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. 
