In connexion with the Ancient British period, it would seem that probably 2,000 years before the Roman times there had been in Great Britain a certain degree of civilization, which from various causes declined in extent. If Stonehenge may be considered as of the same antiquity as similar remains in various parts of the East—which are reckoned by good authorities to be 4,000 years old—we had in this country a degree of civilization which was contemporary with the prosperous period of the Egyptian empire; and, in times more immediately preceding the Roman occupation, we know that Britain was the grand source of Druidical illumination (whatever relation that may have had to a true civilization) to the whole of Continental Europe.
That the Ancient Britons, even after they were conquered by the Romans, had still a strength considered dangerous, is shown by the fact that upwards of forty barbarian legions which had followed the Roman standards were settled chiefly upon the northern and eastern coasts; and it is shown that a force of about 19,200 Roman foot and 1,700 horse was required to secure peace, and the carrying out of certain laws in the island.
The encampments, Roman and British, are thus described. In the Roman camp, the plan is invariably the same—a rectangular area, surrounded by a ditch, the earth thrown inwards, forming a high mound, defended on the top with wooden palisades, but of these all vestiges have disappeared: in the middle of each side the entrance, from which a way led to the opposite gate; and at or near the outer action of the two ways, was the Prætorium, the remains of which may frequently be traced. These camps are not usually found on very high hills. The Britons, on the other hand, always occupied the highest ground, frequently an isolated hill, which they surrounded with deep trenches and a series of low terraces scooped out of the side of the hill, rising one above another, not in an unbroken line, but forming, in some places, a network of flat forms, commanding every approach to the entrances, with advantageous positions for the sling, in the use of which the Britons peculiarly excelled. Every inequality of the ground was taken advantage of: the entrances sometimes opened into one of the trenches, through which the approach to the interior leads, so as to expose an enemy to an overwhelming storm of darts and stones from the heights above.
Our early historians mention four great roads by which South Britain was traversed, and these usually have been considered as the work of its conquerors; but recent researches have led to the conclusion that the Romans only kept in repair, and perhaps improved, the roads which they found in use on their settlement in the island. Along the course of the great roads, or in their immediate vicinity, are found the principal cities, which, in pursuance of their usual policy, the Romans either founded or re-edified; and to which, according to the privilege bestowed, the various names were given of colonies, municipalities, stipendiary, and Latian cities. Many other Roman roads exist.
"The old British roads, or trackways, were not paved or gravelled, but had a basis of turf, and wound along the tops or sides of the chains of hills which lay in their way. Surrey furnishes a remarkable example of such an appropriation of one of its chalk ridges; and it may be inferred that the agger called the Hog's Back presented to the earliest inhabitants of Britain a natural causeway of solid chalk, covered with a soft verdant turf, peculiarly suited to the traffic of the British chariots, and connecting the western Belgæ with the Cantii, and affording through them an access towards the continent at all seasons of the year. These advantageous peculiarities, no doubt, rendered it the grand strategic route by which an invading army would have penetrated to the westward; and Vespasian may be supposed, with great reason, to have marched along it."[7]
To return to the Roman Roads. Although inferior to the Britons of the nineteenth century in the art of spending money, if judged by the present state of science, the Roman road-makers could not be despicable engineers: their levels were chosen on different principles, but their lines of roads passed through the same counties, and generally in the same direction as our railways. A diagram in the Quarterly Review, exhibiting a general view of the direction of the principal Roman roads in England, shows that, on comparing one or two of our principal lines, we shall find, that the Great Western supplies the place, with a little deviation near Reading, of the Roman iter from London to Bath and Bristol; the Liverpool and Manchester, and on to Leeds and York, replaces the northern Watling-street; the Great Eastern follows a Roman way, and so of the rest.[8]
Professor Phillips has thus strikingly illustrated this comparison to be made in the North of England. "As now two railways, so a little earlier two mail-roads, and far earlier two British tracks, conducted the traveller from South Britain through the sterner country of the North. This is the inevitable result of the great anticlinal ridge of stratified rocks—our Pennine Alps—thrown up from Derbyshire to the Scottish Border. This is the 'heaven water' boundary of the river drainages: on the west of it ran the line of road northward from Mancunium; on the east of it the line from Eburacum; the former nearly in the course of the North-eastern, the latter not lately deviating from the North-eastern rail. Along these routes Agricola divided his troops: these were the routes followed alike by the Pict and Scot, Plantagenet and Tudor, Cavalier and Roundhead. Wade lay on the east of these mountains, while the Stuart overran their western slopes: and Rupert swept up the western tract to surprise the besiegers of York."[9] On the whole it appears that the lines of the earlier British roads were indicated by the great features of nature; and that, for the most part, the Roman ways followed and straightened the old tracks.
"It is equally remarkable and significant that the Roman municipia and coloniæ became the centres of Saxon and Anglican strength; and if in this day of the steam-engine their relative importance is less conspicuous, it is still a matter of English history. From the top of the Brigantian mountain we may reanimate the busy world which has long passed away from life: the jealous boundaries of propriety disappear; the chimneys vanish; the thundering hammer is silent. From the midst of boundless forests of oak and pine, rise many peaks or bare summits of heaths crowned with monumental stones or burial mounds. The rivers gliding through the deepest shade, bear at intervals the light wicker boat, still frequent in Dyfed, loaded with fish, or game, or fruit. On dry banks above are the conical huts of the rude hunters, and near them the not narrower houses of the dead,—perhaps not far off the cave of the wolf. Lower down the dale, the richest of pastures is covered with the fairest of cattle and the most active of horses. Still lower, the storehouse of the tribe, the water station to which large canoes, hollowed from the mighty oaks of Hatfield Chase, have brought from the Humber the highly-prized beads and amulets, perhaps the precious bronze which is to replace the arrow, spear, and axe of stone.
"Both north and south of the Humber very different scenes appear on the high and open Wold: within the memory of man, many parts of these wild regions were untouched by plough, traversed by bustard, and covered with innumerable flocks. The more we reflect on the remains which crowd this region—the numerous tracks, the countless tumuli, the frequent dykes—the clearer grows the resemblance between the Yorkshire Wolds and the Downs of Wilts and Dorset. On opening the tumuli we discover similar ornaments, and from whatever cause, consanguinity of race, or analogy of employments and way of life, the earliest people must be allowed to have been very much the same along the dry chalk hills from the vicinity of Bridlington to the country of Dorchester. This is the region of the tumuli: on its surface are not unfrequent foundations of the British huts."
The main population did not reside on these hills, since they are for miles naturally dry. But, from below their edge rise innumerable bright streams, by which, "no doubt, were the settled habitations, the Cyttian of the early Britons, followed by the Saxon tun and the Danish by; on the hills above were long boundary fences, and within these the raths and tumuli, the monumental stones and idols. In situations where nature gave peculiar advantages, one of the grand manufactures of the tribes was established. The fabrication of pottery, from the Kimmeridge clay about Malton, was undoubtedly very extensive in British days, and characteristic both as to substance and fashion; that of bricks and tiles at York was equally considerable in Roman days, and it is curious to walk now into the large brick-yards and potteries which are successfully conducted at these same places, on the very sites which furnished the funeral urn, and the perforated tube which distributed air from the hypocaust."