e only remnant that is left of "Roman" Rouen is not Roman at all,
but a type of that strong, naive, and sincere Christianity which
invigorated the Gothic captains who overthrew Rome. It is but fitting
that there should be so little left. For the Romans were not so much a
nation as an empire. They were not so much a people, as the embodiment
of a power. When their work of spreading law and order, of diffusing
Greek imagination through the channels of their strength was over,
they split asunder at the vigorous touch of the truth that came
against them. They left no personal traces in a town so far removed as
Rouen from the centres of their civilisation.

It was the same in London, which was still farther off. For if you
believe that any "Roman" wall was built round Augusta before 400 A.D.,
there is little left of it to point to now, save at that south-eastern
corner on which the Norman Conqueror built his tower, at the New Post
Office buildings in St. Martin's le Grand, and in the churchyard of
St. Giles's, Cripplegate. In the British Museum and at Guildhall are
some scanty relics of domestic life, some fragments of mosaic, shreds
of pavement, and the like.

At Rouen it is the same. The legions left the stamped impression of
their armoured feet, impersonal and strong, a hallmark as it were, to
guarantee the local strength and value of the first Rothomagus. But it
was the Christian worshippers who left the only building that remains
of those first centuries, to testify to what some men and women in
that early time could really feel and think and do.

It is by another priest that the story of the town is carried on from
"Roman" times to the next period of transition. St. Godard
appropriately enough, a Frank by descent himself and born of a Roman
mother, is the link between this shadowy twilight of early church
history and the stronger colouring of the Frankish story that is to
come. In 488 he was elected as the fourteenth bishop of Rouen by the
unanimous vote of clergy and people together, and eight years
afterwards he represented the diocese when Hlodowig or Clovis was
baptised at Rheims, from which we may gather that the Frankish power
had definitely embraced his town within its grasp some time before. He
died about 525 and his body, which was first buried in the crypt of
the church which bears his name, was afterwards removed to Soissons.
It was at that same Soissons that the Romans were driven out of
"France," and Hl