well as that of a bazaar. Be that as it may, it is clear that this department of the great block of buildings formed its southernmost limit, for a paved street has been discovered close to its walls, along which ran a side gutter, or possibly a water-course, such as we find at Salisbury; for in one place large stones were discovered, placed transversely in the channel, as though they had been used as steppingstones. This great public building contained possibly a forum, establishment of baths, a market-place, and bazaar, was surrounded on three sides, at least, by streets; and, for aught we know, excavations to the eastward will prove that it formed what the Romans called an insula.

The discovery of numerous fragments of columns and capitals within its ruins, proves that it must have been ornamented with architectural features of a striking character, which gave it a noble appearance, situated as it was, in the middle and on the highest spot of the city within the walls. Beyond this building excavations have been made only to a small extent southward, but sufficiently to prove that buildings exist on the other side of the street last discovered. The Committee of Excavations have evidently hit upon the most central and important spot in the city; and, dig where they will,-north, south, east, or west,-in the four acres which the Duke of Cleveland has leased to them, they cannot avoid opening up remains which will probably help to elucidate the stone puzzle they have already exposed.

As I moved away from my minute examination of

the ruins, I found the gentleman in black gathering up the precious fragments rescued from the trench with eager solicitude, which he carried off to a kind of box of Autolycus, under charge of the foreman of the excavators. The labourer was digging away like a machine, and taking as much interest in his work. As he shovelled up some fragments of pottery I remarked:

"There seems to have been a grand smash of crockery hereabouts."

"Yes, sir,” he replied; "there be a main sight of

them sort of cattle buried here," and went on with his work. Such are the differences between man and man induced by education.

After tracing the dry bones of the Roman city, it was doubly interesting to give it life by means of the relics collected from its depths. A considerable number of articles illustrative of the every-day occupations and amusements of the inhabitants have already been secured in the Museum at Shrewsbury. Pottery, of course,

is in abundance, including a piece of Samian ware

repaired with metal rivets, and some not inelegant Romano-Salopian pottery made from fine Broseley clay, innumerable roofing

tiles of pottery and micaceous slate with the nails yet remaining in them. Of iron-work there are abundant remains; keys, chains, shackles, rings, nails, doorhinges, and an iron padlock have been found so wonderfully like uninteresting

modern work, that one cannot help thinking the

stilted Roman of our school-books must; after all, have been very like one of ourselves. Turning over the box of relics my friend in the black gaiters has directed my attention to what do I find?-scores of cock's legs with natural spurs, filed evidently to fit on bronze ones. That they knew how to fight a main of cocks at Uriconium is quite evident, and those legs in all probability were those of celebrated victors. Searching again, I found a cock made of lead, evidently a child's toy, that had once gladdened little Roman eyes not far from where I stood. Again rummaging, I come upon roundels formed from the bottoms of earthenware vessels, evidently used by the gamins of Uriconium in some game, possibly Hop-scotch, which we know to be a pastime of remote antiquity. And then for the ladies, as Autolycus would say, I found in the Museum combs of bone, bodkins, beads, bracelets; and for the

men, studs and buttons of bronze, a strigil to scrape his skin in the public sweating-bath, and tweezers to tweak his curled beard. But what is this a patent

The Leaden (toy) Cock. [Actual size.]

medicine in Uriconium? Yes-an eye-salve-here is the seal of the physician who vended it, marked, like Rowland's Macassar, with his name, to prevent unprincipled imitation," as follows:

"The dialibanum of Tiberius Claudius, the physician for all complaints of the eyes, to be used

[Actual size.]

Uriconium and come at last to the conclusion that, Romano-Britons as they were, they must have ate, drank, slept, played, and looked won

derfully like ourselves. Not so, however, if we are to believe newspaper paragraphs-the barbarians who put an end to all this refinement ages ago.

In the corner of an orchard abutting upon the Watling Street road, in the village of Wroxeter, but within the old line of walls, upwards of twenty human skeletons were a short time since exhumed, several of the skulls of which presented extraordinary appearances. Their facial bones are, in fact, all askew, the eye-sockets of one side of the face being in advance of those of the other side. Such terrible-looking creatures as these real original "Angles" were certainly enough to frighten the city into subjection. An examination of these skulls, however, and a knowledge of the conditions under which they were found, would lead to the conviction that Mother Earth has to answer for this distortion. When exhumed, they were in the condition of wet biscuit, in consequence of the state of the ground, which is full of springs. It can easily, therefore, be imagined that the weight of the superincumbent earth acting through so many centuries had pressed those skulls that had fallen sideways thus out of their usual shape. There is in the British Museum a skull of a Saxon warrior, disinterred not long since in Cambridgeshire, with his Saxon ornaments about him, which presents similar distortions with respect to the orbits and the extraordinary elongation of the head which these Wroxeter skulls do. Judging from this fact alone, I am inclined to think that these poor people of the orchard have been shamefully maligned as to their personal appearance.

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