th, the
spread of the modern town has done much to wipe out the ancient
landmarks.

The Roman remains of Le Mans show well how the conquering race in their
distant foundations knew how to adapt themselves to every kind of
position. There was one type of city which was preferred wherever the
ground allowed of it; but that type was freely forsaken whenever
practical necessity commanded that it should be forsaken. The hill of
Vindinum, Suindinum, Subdinnum, whichever form we are to choose, therein
differing from the hill of Isca, was not at all suited for the laying
out of a city according to the familiar type of a Roman _chester_. The
high ground immediately overlooking the river formed a long narrow
ridge, and the space included within the Roman walls--_la Cite_, as
distinguished from the more modern parts of the town--shows no approach
to a square, but forms an irregular figure, which only by a stretch of
courtesy can be called even an oblong. Within this again the chief
ecclesiastical street, the _Rue des Chanoines_, running parallel with
the more secular _Grande Rue_, bears in mediaeval documents the strange
title of _Vetus Roma_, which has been held to point to a still earlier
enclosure, that of the primitive Gaulish fort itself. Of the Roman
walls, whose construction, like that of most Roman walls in Gaul and
Britain, shows them to be not earlier than the third century, large
portions still remain; indeed a little time back it might have been said
that the river front of the wall, with its noble range of round
bastions, was all but absolutely perfect. On the other side, towards the
modern town, the wall was less perfect, but even there a great deal
could be made out. But the Roman walls did not take in the whole even of
the mediaeval city. In the thirteenth century an outer range of wall was
raised close to the stream, taking in the suburb of _La Tannerie_; an
extension to the south and south-east took in the quarter of Saint
Ben'et, and another suburb called _L'Eperon_. More remarkably still, at
the north-east corner of the Roman inclosure, the growth of the
cathedral of Saint Julian to the east, exactly as in the case of
Lincoln, overleaped the Roman wall and caused a further enlargement at
this corner. It should be noticed that, contrary to the general Gaulish
rule, the church of Le Mans stood in a corner of the original city, so
as to make somewhat of an ecclesiastical quarter after a fashion English
rather tha