IT is true that the chief cities of Britain were exempt from oppression. They elected their own magistrates and made their own laws, but they enjoyed this liberty because their inhabitants were either Roman soldiers or their allies.

Outside these cities the great mass of the native population were bound to the soil, while a large proportion of them were absolute slaves. Their work was in the brick fields, the quarries, the mines, or in the ploughed land, or the forest. Their homes were wretched cabins plastered with mud, thatched with straw, and built on the estates of masters who paid no wages.

The masters lived in stately villas adorned with pavements of different colored marbles and beautifully painted walls. These country-houses, often as large as palaces, were warmed in winter, like our modern dwellings, with currents of heated air, while in summer they opened on terraces ornamented with vases and statuary, and on spacious gardens of fruits and flowers.*