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Then on to Silchester, its furzy common and scattered village and the vast ruinous walls, overgrown with ivy, bramble, and thorn, of ancient Roman Calleva. Inside the walls, at one spot, a dozen men were still at work in the fading light; they were just finishing shovelling earth in to obliterate all that had been opened out during the year.
They were traders, or dealers in land, or money-lenders or other 'well-to-do' persons. The labourers and servants of Calleva must be sought among the native population, and the graffiti testify that this population wrote Latin. It is a further question whether, besides writing Latin, the Callevan servants and workmen may not also have spoken Celtic. Here direct evidence fails.
It has been found that the walls of Calleva followed the irregular outline of a former British stronghold, and instead of the usual square plan the outline of the city was seven-sided. The remnants of the flint walls are nearly one and three-quarter miles round and contain within their circumference about 100 acres.
Of Roman Calleva itself and the thoughts I had there I will write in the following chapter; here I will only relate how on Easter Sunday, two days after arriving, we went to morning service in the old church standing on a mound inside the walls, a mile from the village and common.
Hard by, almost within a stone's-throw of the wood-grown earthwork on which I stand, are the ruinous walls of Roman Calleva the Silchester which the antiquarians have been occupied in uncovering these dozen years or longer. The stone walls, too, like the more ancient earthwork, are overgrown with trees and brambles and ivy.
In this silent solitary place, with the walled field which was once Calleva Atrebatum at my feet, I yet have a sense of satisfaction, of security, never felt in a land that had no historic past. The knowledge that my individual life is but a span, a breath; that in a little while I too must wither and mingle like one of those fallen yellow leaves with the mould, does not grieve me.
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