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centre for the arts and manufactures of Kent and of the valley of the Thames, over which river, if the testimony of Dio can be relied on, the Britons had already constructed a bridge somewhere near the site of the lowest of the existing structures. Ten years afterwards, in the reign of Nero, we hear of the now famous city, the greatest and wealthiest the world has ever seen, having become the residence of a great number of such dealers as the Romans dignified with the title of merchants, and between whom and the small traders of Rome, Cicero drew, as we have already noticed, so marked and so supercilious a distinction.

It is not the province of this work to follow in detail the course of Roman conquest. It is sufficient to state that the Romans only gained their footing in Britain by slow degrees, and that the legions which had conquered other countries almost as soon as they marched into them, had to encounter many a sturdy foe, and to achieve many a hard-earned victory, ere they obtained full control over a people, who, though fully alive to the advantages of a commercial intercourse with Rome, cherished a love of independence unsurpassed by any other nation of antiquity. Indeed, it was not until the governorship of Agricola that Britain could in any sense be called a Roman province; and that Agricola succeeded where other generals, such as Plautius and Ostorius Scapula, had failed, is mainly attributable to the care and gentleness of his administration, and to his obvious desire to make the chains he had forged for the British as agreeable as possible to them. Agricola was the first Roman general who had penetrated into