perial power. And the Romans, very wisely, proved themselves great road-makers. In this we see their purpose to grip the country firmly, and maintain their grasp. They had to cut their way through dense forests, in the face of a sleepless and heroic enemy. One of the forests through which they had thus to force their way northwards, after establishing themselves at Mancunium or Mamucium, was that of Holcombe. Leaving Manchester by Strangeways, Kersall Moor, Prestwich, and Radcliffe, the road strikes right along the crown of the Affetside ridge, on by Edgeworth to Ribchester and the north. A short distance above Hawkshaw Lane, and a little to the south of a lone moorland rill, there is what appears to be a sepulchral mound. In the absence of definite knowledge about it, we may yield for a moment to conjecture. At this point the Romans in their northward advance, after leaving Manchester, would first approach the East Lancashire hills. The Britons there, on their favourite ground, would doubtless be on the alert, and, issuing from the neighbouring coom of Holcomb, or the caer that probably existed above Ramsbottom, may have swept round upon them through the forest, from the brow of the hill, to dispute the way; and the tumulus may mark the spot where some brave chieftain fell. The footprints of imperial Rome in Britain are indelible, and material remains abundant. But those of an authentic character, in this immediate locality, are scanty. In addition, however, to the great Roman high

way, or Watling Street, we have an interesting find of coins and jewelry, which takes us back to the third century. On the eastern side of the valley, in a secluded little dell at Throstle Hillock, which lies between Grant's Tower and Buckhurst, a small earthen vessel was dug up by a farmer in 1864. It contained silver bracelets, armlets, rings, &c., and " an amulet of silver, richly streaked with orange-coloured veins, and pierced so as to be suspended alone." In addition to these relics, the urn contained upwards of five hundred Roman coinsextending from the reign of Gallienus (253-268) to that of Maximianus (286-310). Many of them bore the image and superscription of Carausius. This Carausius was appointed by the Roman Emperor Maximian to command the imperial naval force stationed at Boulogne. Soon after his appointment he revolted (287), and having secured the allegiance of the fleet, sailed over to Britain-at that time only slightly guarded-persuaded the Roman legion and auxiliaries there to embrace his party, assumed the imperial purple and the title Augustus, defied the Roman power, spread terror far and wide by his fleets, and usurped the rule of Britain for seven years. He was assassinated by his first minister, Allectus, who then succeeded him; but soon after, to the joy of the people, Allectus was overthrown by a Roman force under Asclepiodatus, and thus Constan

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tius recovered the island for imperial Rome in the year 296.1

The obverse side of one of the coins which is in the writer's possession bears round the head, "Carausius PP Aug. Imp.-Carausius, pater patriæ, Augustus Imperator "Carausius, father of his country, sacred or august, Emperor. These coins and other relics, perhaps deposited in flight, had, in all likelihood, lain in the sequestered spot where they were found for more than fifteen hundred years.

The first elements of civilisation that reached our dusky forest domain came with the conquering eagles of Imperial Rome. The alphabet we teach our children was hers. And it was during her supremacy that the light of Christianity began to dispel the prevailing heathen darkness. We have seen an altar, found farther north, on the line of the Roman Wall, from the Tyne to the Solway, inscribed thus-Ad Veteres (to the old ones). It is just possible that it was reared by persons adhering to the old Roman deities, as a protest against the growing influence of Christianity. Perhaps, also, it might have a dash of facetiousness, such as would be found in the modern Lancashire equivalent, "To th' owd uns." The Emperor Constantius Chlorus, who favoured the Christians, died in the imperial palace of York-Eboracum-in the year 306. The coins of his son, Constantine the Great, bore the Christian emblem of the cross. Constantine and his successors held Britain till the second decade of the fifth century. By that time the Goths of Alaric had been within the gates of Rome, and

the Roman legions in Britain were recalled in 411 to protect the centre of what had become a tottering empire.

After the departure of the imperial forces, the civilisation wrought through three centuries and a half was practically obliterated by the Anglo-Saxon conquest. Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Frisians, and others, like successive waves, moved westward over the land, and Roman Britain bowed

"to swift decay,

As ocean sweeps the labour'd mole away."

Her cities, palaces, laws, industries, customs-civil, social, and domestic alike-seem to have crumbled to pieces under the force and fury of successive onslaughts. The conquering warrior-husbandmen preferred a "stead" or " wick,"

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"ham or "ton" or "worth" on the open plain or slope, to elegant Roman villas or fortified Roman towns, and they evidently would have none of them. But the elements of civilisation, literature, and art, which thus vanished before the invader, after the withdrawal of the protecting sword of Rome, returned, two centuries later, with her messengers of the Cross. It was, however, to a different people. Her military and civil dominion, so far as it extended in the island, had been over the Britons; her ecclesiastical was organised among the English. Where her legions left the Celt, Augustine found the Saxon. The southern Celt, after long-continued and heroic defence, retreated to Cornwall and Wales; the northern still remained supreme beyond the Forth and the Clyde.

After the English conquest, the Frisian element appears to have been strong in south Lancashire; and this explains much in the local dialect, especially the peculiar use of the