a considerable period, the progress of the Roman victors,
whose grand object seems to have been the conquest of these nations, who
had chosen the gallant Caractacus as their chieftain, and resolutely
exhausted every effort in defence of the independence of their country.

[1] Mackintosh's Hist. England, vol. i, p. 247.

The present demolished state of the Castle is referred to the Royalist
Governors of Hereford, by whose orders it was burnt to the bare walls
during the reign of Charles I. in the absence of its then possessor, Sir
J. Brydges.

The scenery of the WYE, at this point is thus described by tourists:
"From Hereford to Ross, its features occasionally assume greater
boldness; though more frequently their aspect is placid; but at the
latter town wholly emerging from its state of repose," it resumes the
brightness and rapidity of its primitive character, as it forms the
admired curve which the churchyard of Ross commands. The celebrated
spire of Ross church, peeping over a noble row of elms, here fronts the
ruined Castle of Wilton, beneath the arches of whose bridge, the Wye
flows through a charming succession of meadows, encircling at last the
lofty and well-wooded hill, crowned with the majestic fragments of
Gooderich Castle, and opposed by the waving eminences of the forest of
Dean. The mighty pile, or peninsula, of Symonds' Rock succeeds, round
which the river flows in a circuit of seven miles, though the opposite
points of the isthmus are only one mile asunder. Shortly afterwards, the
Wye quits the county, and enters Monmouthshire at the New Wear.

The Rev. Mr. Gilpin, in his charming little volume on Picturesque
Beauty,[2] has a few appropriate observations: after passing Wilton--

[2] Observations on the River Wye, &c. By William Gilpin,
M.A.--Fifth Edition.

"We met with nothing for some time during our voyage but grand, woody
banks, one rising behind another; appearing and vanishing by turns, as
we doubled the several capes. But though no particular objects
characterized these different scenes, yet they afforded great variety of
pleasing views, both as we wound round the several promontories, which
discovered new beauties as each scene opened, and when we kept the same
scene a longer time in view, stretching along some lengthened reach,
where the river is formed into an irregular vista by hills shooting out
beyond each other and going off in perspective."

We ought not to forget to men