but an old-fashioned one; and it will be doing it no injustice to confess that, as towns now go, it does strike the visitor as somewhat behind the age. The straw plaiting, it is true, keeps the hands of its young women and its children busy; still there are but few signs of life in its streets; its shops, its market, its inns, measured by the present standard of excellence within twenty miles of our great metropolis, are certainly far from first-rate, and if the grass does not actually grow in its streets, it is not because the busy feet of commerce keep it down.
Yet there is one feature in St. Alban's which is far from second-rate—we mean its grand old abbey, which frowns, or rather smiles, down so calmly on the roofs of the town below, and looks across the little river, the Ver, upon the gray massive ruins of ancient Verulamium in the green meadow beyond. So we thank the rail way after all for having opened up to the London excursionist and rural visitor one of the most delightful fields for summer rambles.
The ancient city which the Romans named Verulamium, and modern historians have shortened into Verulam, stood on the south-west side of the Ver, a river which seems in those days to have been of far greater size than now, when it will scarcely do more than turn a mill, for antiquaries tell us that a ship's anchor has been found imbedded in its mud. Be this, however, as it may, two thousand years ago it was an important British city, and the seat of the princes of the Cassii, and there are not wanting zealous partisans who claim for its foundation an earlier date than for that of London. Some British coins, it is well known, bear on them the letters VER, and Camden supposes, with a great show of probability, that they were coined at Verulam.
As soon as the Romans got possession of the southern and central parts of Britain, we find Verulam promoted to the dignity and privileges of a municipium—a proof that it was already a place of some importance, though, no doubt, it owed its advancement to the zeal with which it had furthered the interests of its new masters—
Romanos rerum dominos, gentemque togatam.
But the same zeal which helped on its material prosperity would seem to have aided in working its fall, for we read that after laying London and Maldon (Camalodunum) in ruins, Boadicea wreaked her vengeance on Verulam, whose riches, according to the historian, Tacitus, were one great cause why the Britons attacked it, passing by other military outposts of equal or even greater importance for the "loot" and plunder which they knew that they should find within its walls. But the success of Boadicea was not lasting; the victory achieved by Suetonius over her ill-disciplined forces gave the final victory to the southern invaders, and Verulam gradually recovered a large portion of its former splendour.
But the fame of Verulam was largely increased by the martyrdom of Albanus, or Alban, a Roman soldier, who, having suffered during the persecution of the Christians by Diocletian, a.d. 303, was enrolled by the Church in her catalogue of martyrs as St. Alban. The story of his death is thus told by Alban Butler, his namesake, the well-known Roman Catholic hagiologist.
Albanus was a Roman by extraction, but a native and an eminent and wealthy citizen of Verulam, who, struck with horror at the cruelties which were perpetrated on the Christians, gave shelter to Amphibalus, a Christian preacher, who had fled to his house for refuge. Edified by the faith and piety of Amphibalus, he became a Christian, and when the heathen soldiers came to his house in search after their prey he changed clothes with Amphibalus, and, allowing him time to effect his escape, presented himself to the soldiers as the object of their inquiry. He was bound and led off to the judge, who happened just then to be sacrificing to his idols. When he saw Alban he was very angry at the fraud which had been practised on him, and commanded his prisoner to sacrifice to the gods. Albanus refused, and the Roman judge ordered him first to be scourged and afterwards to be beheaded on a hill just outside the town. The legend runs that so eager was Alban for the honour of martyrdom that, the little bridge being too narrow to admit the crowds which flocked to the place of his execution, the waters of the Ver were parted at his entreaty, just as the waters of the Red Sea had been parted by the rod of Moses, and that the executioner, converted by the miracle, threw away his sword, and fell at Alban's feet, praying to he allowed to become a Christian and to die with him. The confessor," adds A. Butler, "went on with the crowd up the hill, which was a pleasant spot, covered with several sorts of flowers, about five hundred paces from the river. There Alban fell upon his knees, and at his prayer there sprung up a fountain, with the water whereof he quenched his thirst. A new executioner being found, he struck off the head of the martyr, but immediately lost both his eyes, which fell out of their sockets upon the ground at the same time. Together with Alban, the soldier who had refused to imbrue his hands in his blood, and had declared himself a Christian, was beheaded. . . . Many of the spectators were con-