If, traveller, you search for the footsteps of the ancient Romans, here
you may behold them. For here their most celebrated ways, crossing one
another, extend to the utmost boundaries of Britain; here the Vennones
kept their quarters; and at the distance of one mile from hence,
Claudius, a certain commander of a cohort, seems to have had a camp,
towards the street, and towards the foss a tomb.

The ground here is so high, and the surrounding country so low and flat,
that it is said, fifty-seven churches may be seen from this spot by the
help of a glass.

The following judicious remarks on the customs, mariners, and dialects
of the common people of this district by Mr. Macauley, who published a
history of Claybrook, may be amusing to many readers.--The people here
are much attached to _wakes_; and among the farmers and cottagers these
annual festivals are celebrated with music, dancing, feasting, and much
inoffensive sport; but in the neighbouring villages the return of the
wake never fails to produce at least a week of idleness, intoxication,
and riot. These and other abuses by which those festivals are grossly
perverted, render it highly desirable to all the friends of order and
decency that they were totally suppressed. On Plow Monday is annually
displayed a set of _morice dancers_; and the custom of ringing the
curfew is still continued here, as well as the pancake bell on Shrove
Tuesday. The dialect of the common people is broad, and partakes of the
Anglo-Saxon sounds and terms. The letter _h_ comes in almost on every
occasion where it ought not, and it is frequently omitted where it ought
to come in. The words _fire_, _mire_, and such like, are pronounced as
if spelt _foire_, _moire_; and _place_, _face_, and other similar words,
as if spelt _pleace_, _feace_; and in the plural you sometimes hear