large dimensions. The largest of all are not yet
opened, but already a hut covering about 450 square feet has been found.
All have a circular area of white stones in the middle, carried from far,
for a hearth, &c., and all have been destroyed by fire. But though the
fire has destroyed the huts completely, it has preserved for us the
account of the material of which they were made, as clearly as if it were
inscribed on the brick cylinders of an Assyrian king. It has baked the
clay with which the huts were covered, and the baked clay shews the
impress of wattle-work. The houses of the Britons at Glastonbury were, as
a matter of fact, as long tradition tells us their church was, made of
wattles[18].

Julius Caesar speaks more than once of the skill of the British in this
respect. He tells us of the plaiting together of the branches of growing
trees to form barriers in the woods, which his soldiers found unpleasantly
effective. We read also of the wattle-work erections of various shapes in
which human victims were enclosed to be burned. And, from a more peaceful
side, we learn that the tables of ladies in Rome were not completely in
the fashion if they had no examples of British baskets. "Basket," as you
know, is one of the best examples of the survival of a British word among
us, a word used also by the Romans[19], their word _bascauda_ and our
"basket" representing the Welsh _basgawd_ and _basget_.

There is abundance of evidence of the interest taken by the Romans in
Britain and its people, and of the esteem in which Britons were held at
Rome. Martial, who settled in Rome in the year A. D. 66, perhaps one year
or two years before St. Paul's death, speaks of a British lady in Rome,
Claudia, the newly-married wife of Pudens. Of her he says[20], in terms as
he believed of the highest personal praise--

Though Claudia from the sea-green Britons came,
She wears the aspect of a Roman dame.

And, again, he mentions, not without pride, that he was read in Britain:
'Britain, too, is said to sing my verse.' It is a little difficult to
resist the tendency to see in this Pudens and Claudia the Pudens and
Claudia of the last sentence before the final blessing in the last letter
of St. Paul, where their names are linked together by that of Linus, the
first Bishop of Rome. We are told, however, that the severe historian
ought to resist this tendency of the natural man.

Again, Seneca, the brother of Gallio, whom we meet in the