. See Dickens's
"Pickwick Papers."

THE OLD ROMAN CAMP.

And then what a hill is the White Horse Hill! There it stands right
above all the rest, nine hundred feet above the sea, and the boldest,
bravest shape for a chalk hill that you ever saw. Let us go up to the
top of him, and see what is to be found there. Ay, you may well
wonder, and think it odd you never heard of this before; but, wonder
or not as you please, there are hundreds of such things lying about
England, which wiser folk than you know nothing of, and care nothing
for. Yes, it's a magnificent Roman camp,[43] and no mistake, with
gates, and ditch, and mounds, all as complete as it was twenty years
after the strong old rogues left it. Here, right up on the highest
point, from which they say you can see eleven counties, they trenched
round all the table-land, some twelve or fourteen acres, as was their
custom, for they couldn't bear anybody to overlook them, and made
their eyrie.[44] The ground falls away rapidly on all sides. Was there
ever such turf in the whole world? You sink up to your ankles at every
step, and yet the spring of it is delicious. There is always a breeze
in the "camp," as it is called and here it lies just as the Romans
left it, except that cairn,[45] on the east side, left by her
majesty's corps of sappers and miners[46] the other day, when they and
the engineer officer had finished their sojourn there, and their
surveys for the Ordnance Map[47] of Berkshire. It is altogether a
place that you won't forget--a place to open a man's soul and make him
prophesy, as he looks down on that great vale spread out as the garden
of the Lord before him, and wave on wave of the mysterious downs
behind; and to the right and left the chalk hills running away into
the distance, along which he can trace for miles the old Roman road,
"the Ridgeway" ("the Rudge" as the country folk call it), keeping
straight along the highest back of the hills; such a place as
Balak[48] brought Balaam to, and told him to prophesy against the
people in the valley beneath. And he could not, neither shall you, for
they are a people of the Lord who abide there.

[43] #Roman camp#: the Romans, when they conquered England,
about 78 A.D., built a stronghold here.

[44] #Eyrie#: the nest of a bird of prey; here, a
gathering-place for Roman soldiers.

[45] #Cairn#: a heap of stones set up to mark a spot.

[46] #Sappers and miners#: usually, sol