There are the ashes of fires that were quenched
some fifteen hundred years ago; there is the
soot they left; but, after all, more interesting
hypocausts have been discovered. One found
at Cirencester contained upright flue tiles and
openings in its wall that evidently were part of
an apparatus for conveying hot air through the
walls to upper rooms. A hypocaust in the
great villa uncovered long since at Woodchester,
in Gloucestershire, is even more elaborate in its
details. Of the hundreds of such chambers now
hidden among the clods at Wroxeter, the one
that had been uncovered when I paid my visit
to the excavation was in itself, therefore, no
specially important specimen.

But let us jump down into it. The few
pounds at the disposal of the Excavation
Committee are being wisely spent under the active
superintendence of its honorary secretary,
Doctor Henry Johnson, of Shrewsbury, my
friendly guide over the ground. They could set
only three or four spades at work, and the
earth thrown up from one trench has to be
thrown back before the next two feet of soil can
be dug into. It is essential that the turnips
should be borne in mind. The tenant of the
field must not be trifled with. He has been
offered ample compensation for his crop if he
will grant the use of his ground; but he is a
thriving man and a stubborn. He will have no
compensation—he will have his turnips. We have
jumped down, then, into the little group of
trenches, following the lines of a few Roman
house walls.

There is a bright spring sun over head,
the old wall standing close by looks blank at
us; here and there a stray antiquary clambers
among the rubbish, careless of dirt stains; an
attentive gentleman on the crest of a dirt heap
explains Roman antiquities to some young
ladies in pink and blue, who have made Wroxeter
the business of a morning drive. An
intelligent labourer, who seems to be a sort of
foreman of the works, waits to disclose to the
honorary secretary the contents of a box in
which it is his business to deposit each day's
findings of small odds and ends.

What has he got in it? Bones of dead
Romans with bones of the mutton the Romans
ate. Fragments of the red Samian pottery,
on which the Romans served their banquets,
and from which they pledged each other,
and drank to the eternity of Rome: a rusty
key without a lock: the ever-pointed pen,
the style, with which a hand once living has,
in this long-buried home, written dead mandates,
messages, and words of friendship on the wooden
tablets spread with wax, which he has then
closed, tied up, and sent by his messenger,
presently to receive back with his words erased, and
the reply to them standing in their place. Was
there a daughter of the house who used this
rusty pen when it was bright, and wrote, and
erased and wrote again, while her hand shook
with her heart's beating. There lies the rusty
style among the bones, the broken wine-cups,
and the mouldered keys. Near it, is one of the
bone hair-pins that are always found among
ruins like these. How long is it since out of a
young heart's joyousness a girl sang, while she
smoothed the hair it fastened, and a flattering
slave held the small metal looking-glass before the
merry eyes that were intent upon the sticking of
that pin through precisely the right part of the
glossy knot? What is this rusty bit of metal?
It once bound the framework of a lyre. Here,
too, is a ridiculous little figure of a cock
modelled in lead, and what is that? It is a child's
toy. Such grotesque little images of animals
in lead or bronze are common among Roman
ruins. Tiny Thracians nursed that ugly little cock,
and did the crowing for it. It is a rude figure,
and of lead instead of bronze. A slave's child
may have had it for a plaything. A slave may
in some half-hour of rest from toil have made it
for his little playfellow. But, see! Here is the
little playfellow himself. Pickaxes are working
with the tenderest care upon the earth in one
corner of a room by the hypocaust. Among
strange treasures of the past, bones of a child
are appearing.

Three skeletons of adults have already been
found there. One lay crouched in a corner. Near
it there was found upon a stone (among the
ashes of the bag that had contained it) a heap
of copper money, one hundred and eighteen
coins. Now I stand by and see the bones and
broken head of a young child drawn from the
ruins. The invaders who laid waste the town
either pursued and massacred these fugitives; or
here they crouched, while the flames of the burning
city roared and crackled over head: so here they
perished, and were crushed under the falling
walls.

If we look to the side of a trench at any part
of the excavation, we observe that the foundations
of the town lie hidden simply below the
heap of its own ruin. There, are the roofing
slates still with the nails in many of their
holes. Practical men judge from its appearance
that this slate must have been brought from
Bettwys Coed by the Romans. In that place
are dug up the millstones used for grinding
down the household corn, and, in a basement
cellar lately opened, there is the charred
mass of the household store of corn still to be
most distinctly recognised. One of the
millstones is a foreign stone, imported, perhaps,
from Andernach, for use in the kitchens of the
Roman gentlemen of England. We find also
the smaller kitchen mortars made of pottery
roughened inside with flint, used for the pounding
of meat, and preparation of made dishes.
Here is a bottle declared to have been made at
Broseley with the Broseley clay, now famous in
tobacco-pipes. Here is the huge earthern handle
of a jar for household stores. The Romans made
great use of pottery. They used upon their
dinner-tables fine decorated Samian-ware
imported from abroad and made coarser pottery of
sundry qualities for many uses, not only for uses
to which now we apply bottles and boxes, but
even for money-chests, and, as it would seem,
cards or admission tickets. They had extensive