they invaded and occupied the country. This little walled town thus buried for centuries was one of their centres and sources of civilized population. What has been already exhumed shows that it was built for a permanent and enlightened community, like all the other Roman cities in Britain that the Roman soldiers were only its garrison, to defend a civilian population of all ages, of mostly husbands and wives and children. For twice the space of time that our American Boston has lived as a civilized community, this Uriconium had a consecutive population, increasing through a dozen successive generations. No history is extant to tell us how many women from Italy were brought into the country; but we know that the highest officers of the Roman army married British wives, and, doubtless, all the private soldiers allowed to marry did the same. Thus Uriconium, though in the first decade may have been only a fortified camp of soldiers, in the next would have become the residence of families, even if no Roman-born woman had ever been introduced within its walls. This Latinized community must have increased without any accessions from Italy, probably by the same ratio of augmentation as any other city population multiplying itself without immigration from abroad. What kind of language its succcessive generations spoke—whether a Latin patois, or a partially Latinized Celt—is a question
