Page:Once a Week, Series 1, Volume II Dec 1859 to June 1860.pdf/57

44 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. Close to the spot where these remains were found, the Wading Street road dips down a steep bank towards the Severn, where there is a ford; but, in all probability, in Roman times, a bridge here crossed the stream. Whether it was ford or bridge, however, it is certain that a strong tower—possibly a water-gate—terminating the city wall towards the river here, guarded its passage, as the foundation walls have been excavated entire. Standing on the mound which marks its site I saw before me the silvery Severn winding amid a thickly-wooded country, once, doubtless, a forest teeming with wild boar and red deer. On the opposite shore, the old military Roman road, as yet strongly marked running between hedgerows, but grass-grown like the fields. The scene was so calm and little disturbed by man, that the imagination could easily picture the Roman legions wending towards the next great military station, their eagles flashing in the setting sun. A. W.

.—Apropos of canals and railways we find it announced, with becoming gravity, in the “Monthly Register” for 1803, that “another canal of great national importance is about to be constructed from Deptford to Portsmouth and Southampton, passing by Guildford, Godalming, and Winchester.” After a detail of its estimated cost, the editor remarks, “a canal in this instance is to be preferred to an iron railway-road, because the expense of carriage by a canal is much cheaper than that of carriage by a railway.” The writer could not foresee the effect of the steam-engine in diminishing the difference, and hence his inference that railway could never compete with canal-carriage. Happily such prophets are not infallible.