parts of the town. These meetings have excited much interest among the poor, and have done much good by leading them to an intelligent consideration of the physical evils from which they suffer.

"3rd. By the employment of female sanitary missionaries." In the present month one of the members of the Committee has established a Branch in Oxford, with every prospect of success.

In conclusion, the Committee earnestly ask the aid of all friends of sanitary reform. Though the increase in the funds during the past year has been considerable, they must be much greater still before all the various parts of the Association's work can be efficiently carried out. The Committee have determined not to expend any of the funds in advertising for aid, as is customary. They consider the better course is to leave the Association's friends and its own work to plead for it. To these friends they earnestly appeal for aid in the coming year, and in humble and grateful reliance on the Author and Finisher of their work, they pledge themselves to increased exertions.

XXXVI.-A LAST RAY OF SUNSHINE.

TELL thy tale, old year,

Tell thy tale of pleasures,
Summon all thy joys,

Show thy hidden treasures.

Opening buds of spring,

Summer's gorgeous flowers,

Cheered us on our way,

Decked the laughing hours.

E'en from fading leaves,

Telling us of sorrow,

Autumn's richest hues,

Golden charms would borrow.

And now Christmas comes,
With its happy greetings,
Jest, and dance, and song,
Blessed fireside meetings.

Memory fondly turns

To her hoarded treasures,
Reckons o'er her wealth,

Counts her dearest pleasures.

Kindly written words,

Little gifts made dearer,

By the charm of love,

Drawing true friends nearer.

Many a loving glance,

Many a fond word spoken,
Tender friendships formed,

Old ones still unbroken.

Such thy tale, old year!

Quit us not in sadness;
But in hearts most tried,

Leave some thoughts of gladness!

OT

CAL

C. M. A. C.

XXXVII.—A VISIT TO A ROMAN VILLA IN THE WEALD OF SUSSEX.

IT was at the season when hundreds and thousands of the Queen's good subjects pour out of hot smoky London every week, hardly knowing in which direction to bend their steps, in search, not perhaps like Dr. Syntax, of the picturesque, but of what is of more vital importance-namely, of fresh air, and relaxation from toil and care.

I have done so myself, often and often, with more or less success as to obtaining the first named object, and getting rid of the others. John Selden says, "The main thing is to know where to search;" a remark which applies to many cases besides the one to which he applied it. But to the point-and I will try to stick to it, though I might as well confess, once for all, that I am of a very rambling disposition, and that with the best possible intention of jogging steadily along the high road, my wits are for ever going a woolgathering down any green lane or lonely sheep path which offers itself.

In one of my rambles through West Sussex, in which, making quiet Little Hampton my head-quarters, I visited Petworth, Parham and Arundel, I was about to return to my dingy lodgings in Cecil Street, in the Strand, when by accident I heard that there was a Roman villa in the neighborhood well worth seeing, and at a very come-at-able distance. Yes; come-at-able, I use the word advisedly, for why should not humble, unknown I, coin (or join) words as well as the great Mr. Carlyle, with his half-English, half-German monstrosities? "Accessible distance," you suggest-to which I reply, that I prefer using English words to any other, and for these plain reasons, that I know no other language but my own, and find it quite sufficient for my purpose. "Reasonable distance," then, you would say! Nonsense, a distance cannot be either reasonable or unreasonable, though it may be very inconvenient; but here I am, rambling again, in spite of all my resolutions to the contrary. We shall never get to the Roman villa at this rate.

On making farther inquiry, I found that the said Roman villa, or Roman pavement, as it is also called, is in the parish of Bignor,

which lies at the foot of the South Downs, about five miles north of Arundel, five miles south of Petworth, and four west of Parham. Parham, where stands that fine Elizabethan house, the seat of one of the oldest of our nobility, and in which more curious things are to be seen than is generally known, for it is an out-of-the-way place. But Bignor-I confess that I had never so much as heard of the place, and certainly should never have thought of looking for a Roman villa in the Weald of Sussex.

It was a beautiful July morning, and that I might have a long day before me, I started betimes from Little Hampton with a lad whom I had engaged to drive me as far as the Duke's lodge on the top of Bury hill. Bury hill is not Mont Blanc, and if it were, I am not a member of the Alpine Club; and though I do not mind a walk of eighteen or twenty miles on a fine summer's day, it must be on fair ground, and not all up hill, at an angle of something like five and forty degrees for five or six miles together. So I got a boy to drive me thus far, and resolved to perform the rest of my journey to Bignor, and to return at night, on foot.

I am not a good hand at describing fine views, so I had better not attempt it, but will merely mention the effect the prospect from the top of Bury hill had on me. Smooth short grass covers the downs for miles together, and beyond that it seemed to me as if a map of the southern counties, colored and as large as life, was spread out far below my feet; for I could see villages, roads, hills and dales, woods and streams, and fields of all sizes, shapes and colors; some bright green pasture, others yellowish-brown fallows, and many wherein the golden grain was almost ready for the sickle.

But I had my way to make, and was impatient to get on, so much so indeed, that as I descended the steep grassy and slippery sides of the hill I was sorely tempted to lie down and roll to the bottom; had I been some twenty years younger, I probably should have done so, but I felt that I was too old for this kind of locomotionperhaps also I was too fat-but personal observations are my abhorrence. I walked steadily forward, till at length I reached, the turnpike road which runs from Chichester to London.

Now I should not have mentioned this so particularly were it only a common turnpike road; but if you please to recollect that this road-sometimes bearing the name of Stone Street, then for ten or a dozen miles called Roman Road, and then again Stone Street—was made by those famous old Romans some seventeen or eighteen hundred years ago, and that it still exists, one monument amongst many of their persevering industry and wisdom, I think you will agree with me that it is rather more interesting than a mere modern Macadam.

Bignor lies about a mile to the west of this road, as I learned at the toll-gate at which I stopped to inquire my way. By the by, we are indebted, not to the Romans, but to the wisdom of the lawgivers

of Charles the Second's reign, for the blessing of toll-gates-whether they will exist as monuments, &c. &c., for many more years is a question which I hope will be decided before many sessions of Parliament pass away.

Well, I turned sharp to the left through the toll-gate-pay-gates they call them in this part of the world—and I jogged on thinking of the Romans, and the Roman soldiers, who did what I believe no other soldiers before or since have done, they worked, and their work is so well done as to appear imperishable. The labor it must have cost to make a road of many miles in length through clay, and such clay as the Weald is made of, I leave you to imagine! To cart stones over it! Over it, do I say? impossible-people do not cart over such clay as this-no, nor ride over it, nor walk over it-they must go through it. Had those wonderful Romans no Boydell's traction engine, flapping along, and laying down a road for itself at the same instant that it passed over it? Or did they lash boards to their feet as big as shop shutters, and thus save themselves from sinking up to their knees in what Bonaparte in his expedition to Poland called "the fifth element," namely, mud, in which that unhappy country abounds?

I know not what appliances they had, nor what inventions necessity brought forth, but I know that they made a good road all the way from Chichester to London, and many others also, but they do not concern us just now.

I walked on for two or three miles, I met no human being, and I saw no signs of their habitations; on my left was the range of the South Down hills, rising so suddenly that it looked almost like a green wall, and excluded everything else from my view. On the other side were fields. I began to entertain some unpleasant doubts as to whether I was on the right track, when to my great relief I saw painted in large black letters on a white gate, "To THE ROMAN VILLA."

Much wondering, I opened the gate and walked in. It was a grass field, and there were several low thatched sheds at the farther end of it, such as are used for fattening cattle. I looked straight before me, I looked to the right and to the left, but no signs of any villa could I discover, except indeed that in the cart-way into the field I observed numerous pieces of Roman brick, such as I had seen lying in heaps mingled with stones by the side of the Roman road -placed there to mend it with.

I walked up to the sheds. They were all shut up. I rattled at the doors one after another, but they were all locked. Could these buildings be for cattle? They are not much given to fattening cattle in the Weald that ever I heard of. No! that can't be it. Can they be dwelling-houses? No; there are no chimneys, and no windows either, only great wooden shutters; so what they were I could not guess, and all I felt assured of was, that they were not the Roman villa which I sought.

I retraced my steps into the road, consoling myself with the reflection that as Bignor was but a small parish, the villa could not be at a very great distance-supposing that there was one at all— for I began to fear it might be only a name, indicating the site of some by-gone splendor. However, I did not long remain in doubt, for shortly after, meeting an ancient laborer, a genuine South Saxon in gait and speech, he informed me that I had already passed the object of my search, and that those mysterious sheds which had so much puzzled me, were built over the Roman pavements to protect them.

From him too. I learned where the keeper of the keys was to be found; and in another quarter of an hour I had the satisfaction of seeing the doors and shutters of the sheds thrown open, and of examining at my leisure several very curious and beautiful mosaic pavements of walls there are none left standing, the foundations only remaining, which mark the extent of the original building.

My guide, who was also the owner of the property, told me that in the summer of 1811 the discovery of these Roman remains was accidentally made by men who were ploughing in the field, and that in the following summer the foundations of the walls were laid open in order to trace the plan of the building, which was found to be very extensive. I began by examining the pavement which was first discovered. I did not measure it myself, but took down the dimensions from my guide's information. The room was thirty feet long, and nineteen wide, and there was a recess of twenty feet in width and twelve in depth on the long side. The mosaic pavement of the recess represents a figure of Ganymede carried away by an eagle, and surrounded by an irregular hexagon; the larger pavement is divided into six hexagonal compartments, within which are represented nymphs dancing-one has been utterly destroyed, and none, I think, are quite perfect, though enough remains to show the dress and attitudes of the figures.

Between the ornamental part of the pavement and the walls, the

space is filled up with coarse red tesselated pavement of about four feet in width- —as we sometimes lay a painted floorcloth between our Turkey carpets and the walls of our dining room! I should mention that the corners of this room, and of some others, are not right angles, an irregularity which I believe was by no means 'uncommon in Roman dwellings, even in palaces.

In the middle of the six compartments just described is a hexagonal stone cistern, about twenty inches in depth—a luxurious contrivance for keeping fish fresh for the table. It is evident too, that the apartment had been warmed by subterranean flues, some of which have given way, thus causing the pavements to fall in and be materially injured. The remains of brick stoves and of flues were likewise discovered in other parts of the ruin.

The second shed I entered was built over a pavement which appears to have been originally about forty-four feet long and