on the right, leads to a range of new and handsome dwellings, called Spa-Place,
from a chalybeate spring found there, which, though furnished by the proprietor with neat marble baths and every convenient appendage for bathing, has not been found sufficiently impregnated with mineral properties to bring it into use. The Humberstone-Gate is out of the local limits of the borough, and subject to the concurrent jurisdiction of the county and borough magistrates; though in the reigns of Edward VI. and Elizabeth, attempts were made to bring it exclusively under the magisterial power of the town. It is part of the manor possessed by the Bishops of Lincoln, in the twelfth century, and is still called the Bishops’ Fee.
Southward from the Humberstone-Gate to the Goltre-Gate, very considerable additions, consisting of several streets, have lately been made to the town.
Advancing forward, the visitor, on passing the weighing machine, enters the
BELGRAVE-GATE,
a street of considerable extent, in the broader part of which stands what may justly be deemed one of the most valuable curiosities of the place; it is a milliare, or Roman mile-stone, forming part of a small obelisk. This stone was discovered in 1771, by some workmen, digging to form a rampart for a new turnpike-road from Leicester to Melton, upon the foss road leading to Newark, and at the distance of two miles from Leicester. Antiquarians allow it to be the oldest milliare now extant in Britain; and perhaps the inscription upon it is older than most others that have been found upon altars, or other monuments of Roman antiquity in this island. It is about three feet long, and between
five and six in circumference. The inscription, when the abbreviations are filled up, may be read thus—
Imperator Cæsar,
Divi Trajani Parthici Filius Divus,
Trajanus Hadrianus Augustus,
Potestate IV. Consulatu III. A Ratis II.Hadrian Trajanus Augustus,
Emperor & Cæsar, the son of the most illustrious Trajan Parthicus,
In the 4th year of his reign, and his 3d consulate.
From Ratæ (Leicester) 2 miles.
Such is the inscription on this milliare, which our industrious antiquaries seem faithfully to have extracted from among the ruins of time and the injuries of accident; an object, which exhibits a curious instance of the civilization introduced by the Roman arms into this
island; for the erection of marks to denote the distance from place to place, is an accommodation, at least to the travelling stranger, which unpolished nations never devised; and which the inhabitants of Britain never generally enjoyed from the final departure of the Roman legions, till the last century, when mile-stones were again erected along our principal turnpike roads. The unlearned visitor, it is confessed, will be apt to view, with some degree of disappointment, the object of which we are speaking, and about which much busy conjecture, and learned antiquarian research has been employed; for indeed, its appearance is neither singular nor striking, the engraving being but slight, and the letters rudely formed. But the ingenious observer will esteem it a valuable curiosity; not only because it clears up the long doubted question, whether