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    244 A VISIT TO A ROMAN VILLA

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    It -Was At The Season Wlien Hundreds And...

    of Charles the Second ' s reign , for the blessing of toll-gates—whether they will exist as monuments & c . & cfor many , more years is a

    , , question which I hope will be decided before many sessions of Parliament pass away .

    "Well ; I turned sharp to the left through the toll-gate—pay-gates they call them in this part of the world—and I jogged on thinking

    of the Romans , and the Roman soldiers , who did what I believe no other soldiers before or since have donethey _tvorJcedand their work

    is so well done as to appear imperishable , . The labor , it must have cost to make a road of many miles in length through clay , and such

    clay as the Weald is made of , I leave you to imagine ! To cart stones over it ! Over itdo I say ? impossible—people do not cart over such

    , clay as this—no , nor ride over it , nor walk over it—they must go through it . Had those wonderful Romans no Boydell ' s traction

    engine , fla _23 ping along , and laying down a road for itself at the same instant that it passed over it ? Or did they lash boards to their feet

    as big as shop shutters , and thus save themselves from sinking up to their knees in what Bonaparte in his expedition to Poland called

    " the fifth element , " namely , mud , in which that unhappy country abounds ?

    I know not what appliances they had , nor what inventions necessity brought forth , but I know that they made a good road all the

    way from Chichester to London , and many others also , but they do not concern us just now .

    I walked on for two or three miles , I met no human being , and I saw no signs of their habitations , * on my left was the range of the

    South Down hills , rising so suddenly that it looked almost like a green wall , and excluded everything else from my view . On the

    other side were fields . I began to entertain some unpleasant doubts as to whether I was on the right trackwhen to my great relief I

    , saw painted in large black letters on'a white gate , "To the Roman Villa . "

    Much wondering , I opened the gate and walked in . It was a grass field , and there were several low thatched sheds at the farther

    end of it , such as are used for fattening cattle . I looked straight before meI looked , to the right and to the leffcbut no signs of any

    villa could , I discover , except indeed that in the , cart-way into the field I observed numerous pieces of Roman brick , such as I had seen

    lying in heaps mingled with stones by the side of the Roman road —placed there to mend it with .

    I walked up to the sheds . They were all shut up . I rattled at the doors one after anotherbut they were all locked . Could these

    buildings be for cattle ? , They are not much given to . fattening cattle in the Weald that ever I heard of . No ! that can't be it . Can

    they be dwelling-houses ? No ; there are no chimneys , and no windows eitheronly great wooden shutters ; so what they were I

    could not guess , , and all I felt assured of was , that they were not

    the Roman villa which I sought .

    244 A Visit To A Roman Villa

    244 A VISIT TO A ROMAN VILLA

• Citation
  • English Woman’s Journal (1858-1864), Dec. 1, 1860, page 244, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/ewj/issues/ewj_01121860/page/28/