IT is curious that Roman buildings and crafts in Britain have hardly been studied as part of the story of our national art. The subject has been neglected by architects and left aside for antiquaries. Yet when this story is fully written, it will appear how important it is as history, and how suggestive in the fields of practice. This provincial Roman art was, in fact, very different from the “classical style” of ordinary architectural treatises. M. Louis Gillet in the latest history of French a

BASILICA. —In 1880 the extensive foundations of an important building with massive walls were found on the site of Leadenhall Market, and a survey of the ruins made by Henry Hodge was published in Archæologia (vol. lxvi.). This great building was exceptional, not only in its scale but in its manner of workmanship. I know no other case where the walls of a building had wrought and coursed facings like the City Wall (Fig. 20 ). Fig. 20. In 1881 Mr. E. P. L. Brock exhibited at a meeting of the Brit

“Gem of all Joy and Jasper of Jocundity, Strong be thy walls that about thee stand; London, thou art the flower of cities all.” THE walls, gates and bastions of the City may be traced by the record of early maps such as that of Braun and Hogenberg. The bastions of the east side are particularly shown on a plan of Holy Trinity Priory made in the sixteenth century; the west side from Ludgate to Cripplegate plainly appears in Hollar’s plan after the fire, 1667. There were two bastions between Ludga

THE site of London by a noble tidal river, or rather at the head of a long estuary, on clean gravel ground intersected with streams, was well chosen. The ground was open heath with scrubby vegetation, except for woods here and there where the soil was suitable. Sir Thomas More planned his “Utopia” on a site similar to that of London. The buildings of London have spoilt an excellent golf course! The walled city set down in the fair land must have been beautiful indeed, as seen from the Hampstead

A FEW of the more important sepulchral monuments have been reserved for special consideration. First among these I wish to discuss the fragments of what I suppose to have been examples of Jove and Giant columns, a class of monument frequently found on the Continent. These columns, it has been thought, were not naturalised in Britain. In Archæologia , lxix., Professor Haverfield, calling attention to an inscription at Cirencester, which seems to have formed part of a small column of the kind, sai

Another type of tomb, of which many examples exist in the Museum at Trèves, is an altar-like structure having a square body surmounted by a slab ending in two big bolster-like rolls covered with scale or leaf ornament (see Espèrandieu). Tombs of this type have been found in Pompeii. We have in the British Museum parts of a very fine monument of this class. One of two stones is a great roll, and another has an inscription in handsome letters. These were found together in the foundations of one of

Some of the sculptured fragments found in the Camomile Street bastion, while doubtless parts of sepulchral monuments, as Price thought, are of too large a scale to have belonged to mausolea of the Igel type. Two of the stones evidently came from angle pilasters of considerable scale. As Price said: “The size and weight of the stones indicate that the edifice was of proportions to bear comparison with the sepulchres in the vicinity of Rome: such monuments were placed near the city gates.” One of

Fig. 72. A FEW broken fragments only remain to us, but they are sufficient to suggest to our imaginations the sculptures of Londinium. The finest work of sculpture found in London is the magnificent head from a bronze statue of the Emperor Hadrian, which was taken from the river near London Bridge in 1834. The head, with the neck, is 16½ in. high. It is really a masterly work of art, of Hellenistic character, and may, I think, be Alexandrian. The treatment of the head and beard is surprisingly l

“Here is grandeur of form, dignity of character, and great breadth of treatment which reminds me of the best Greek schools. Were I a painter I should venture to enlarge upon the quality and distribution of colour.” SOME screen appears to be set up between us and our Roman works of art. Even the mosaics, which we might have supposed would have been interesting—even fascinating—seem to be regarded as mere museum objects and subjects for antiquarian tracts. So far as I know there is only one book w

BY putting together, in our imagination, the mosaic floors, the fragments of wall paintings, and the marble linings, we can gain a fairly certain knowledge of what the finer Roman interiors in Londinium were like, and we may further add to the impression by remembering the many precious objects in silver, bronze, pottery and glass, which are in our museums. Broken remnants of wall paintings have been found in large quantities, and pieces are preserved at the British, the Guildhall, and the Londo

LETTERS. —Fine lettering is the most perfect thing in the art of the Romans. For one thing, it was developed on a field where they were not obsessed with the idea of imitating Greek art; it was their very own, and it was swiftly carried to an apex of perfection in the first century A.D. It is a constant phenomenon on all the fields of Art that it is the first great flow of development which chiefly matters; all things of life and growth are like this, and, as I once heard a fine old Devonshire f

IN his account of Roman London, the late Dr. Haverfield writes ( J.R.S. , vol. i.): “The citizens appear to have been Roman or definitely Romanised. Of Roman speech in London we have an isolated but sufficient proof. A tile dug up in Warwick Lane, in 1886, bore an inscription, meaning, apparently, ‘Austalis (Augustalis) goes off on his own every day for a fortnight.’ It seems to follow that some of the bricklayers [makers] of Londinium could write Latin. In the lands ruled by Rome, education was

“It was no longer thought to be Britain but a Roman island; and all their money was stamped with Cæsar’s image. Meanwhile these islands, stiff with frost, received the beams of light, the holy precepts of Christ, the true Sun, at the later part of the reign of Tiberius Cæsar.” CHRISTIAN BRITAIN. —The whole subject of Christian antiquities in Britain was for a long time clouded by mere doubt of testimony, until the comparatively recent discovery of the foundations of an early Christian basilican

3 .   The substance of this chapter was read at the Society of Antiquaries about 1917, but it has not been printed before. FIRST BRITISH CITIES. —Ancient cities were not planted down by an act of will, they sprang up on lines of communication as centres of control and commerce. On a geological map it appears that a chalk belt passes from Kent to Hampshire towards the south bank of the Thames. From the north bank another wide belt diverges to the north-east. The backbones of these chalk regions a