Poor Boadicea: if she suffered all that is said, "an indignant mien" would seem to be a weak description of her state of mind; but a rhyme was necessary. This more or less historical Amazon of early Britain has now a statue to her memory on Westminster Bridge. (And, by the way, London has yet to learn—and might learn from Paris—how to utilise the artistic possibilities of bridges.)
WATERGATE STREET, CHESTER
But to return to St. Albans. The Watling Street of the Romans from London to Chester ran through this town. After the departure of the Roman legions, St. Albans suffered a long siege at the hands of the Anglo-Saxon invaders. Sacked and left in ruins it became a stronghold for outlaws. Then the Church came with holy balm, and the foundation of a monastery gave St. Albans peace.
Chester, where the Watling Street of the Romans ended, is to-day one of the most picturesque of English cities. Its old timbered houses and arcaded streets give it a mediæval air, which is jealously preserved in all restoration work. Bath is another city of Roman antiquity. Portions of the Roman baths still exist there, and the existence of a great modern spa shows that the doctors of to-day endorse the opinion of their colleagues of the days of Cæsar. Apart from its medicinal waters, Bath is a very beautiful town, the architectural treatment of its hill-sides being most effective. In an earlier century it was a great resort of fashion, and there reigned Beau Nash, the Exquisite. To-day Bath is less popular, but not less deserving of favour, and an effort is being made to restore its old glories. Winchester, another Roman town, an old capital of the kingdom, and the reputed capital of King Arthur, where the "curfew bell" still rings, should be among the first three of the cities of England visited. From there it would be well to go west to ramble through Plymouth, a naval port full of memories of Francis Drake and other gallants of the glorious Elizabethan days. Bristol then claims a day; also Rochester, which has the second oldest cathedral in England, and which has a new source of interest in that it is emphatically, after London, the Dickens city. Canterbury should have more than a day, for it is a link between Briton England and Roman England, and then between Briton England and Saxon England. (Between Dover and Canterbury was the first line of resistance to the Roman invaders, and again to the Saxon invaders.) There Bertha, the first Christian Queen of Kent, worshipped in the little Church of St. Michael. There St. Augustine christened Ethelbert of Kent, founded a monastery, ordained a bishop (1300 years ago), and set the foundations of the first Christian cathedral in England. There, too, À Becket shed his blood; and there is the shrine of the Black Prince.
Salisbury, with its cathedral, must not be missed. It was a great fortified town once, and Pepys records in his Diary:—
So over the plain by sight of the steeple to Salisbury by night; but before I came to the town, I saw a great fortification, and alighted, and to it, and in it, and find it so prodigious so as to fright me to be in it all alone at that time of night, it being dark. I understand since it to be that that is called Old Sarum.
The remains of Old Sarum are the fragments of a great feudal castle and keep. It was these ruined walls and yawning ditches which sent two members to Parliament until the Reform Act of 1832. To the present day Salisbury is a central point in the military defences of England, the chief training-grounds for troops being at Salisbury Plain.