further excavations were made a noble Roman villa with numerous rooms,
artistic pavements, hypocausts, baths, carvings, and many beautiful
relics of Roman art were brought to light. Possibly you may be equally
successful in your own village and neighbourhood.

If you have the good fortune to live near a Roman station, you will
have the pleasing excitement of discovering Roman coins and other
treasures, when you watch your labourers draining the land or digging
wells. Everyone knows that the names of many of the Roman stations
are distinguished by the termination _Chester, caster_, or _caer_,
derived from the Latin _castra_, a camp; and whenever we are in the
neighbourhood of such places, imagination pictures to us the
well-drilled Roman legionaries who used to astonish the natives with
their strange language and customs; and we know that there are coins
and pottery, _tesserae_ and Roman ornaments galore, stored up beneath
our feet, awaiting the search of the persevering digger. Few are the
records relating to Roman Britain contained in the pages of the
historians, as compared with the evidences of roads and houses, gates
and walls and towns, which the earth has preserved for us.

Near your village perhaps a Roman road runs. The Romans were famous for
their wonderful roads, which extended from camp to camp, from city to
city, all over the country. These roads remain, and are evidences of
the great engineering skill which their makers possessed. They liked
their roads well drained, and raised high above the marshes; they liked
them to go straight ahead, like their victorious legions, and never swerve
to right or left for any obstacle. They cut through the hills, and
filled up the valleys; and there were plenty of idle Britons about,
who could be forced to do the work. They called their roads _strata_ or
streets; and all names of places containing the word _street_, such as