(P.34.) (_From Archaeologia._)] Nor is the Roman fashion of house-fittings confined to the mansions of the wealthy.

Hypocausts and painted stucco, copied, though crudely, from Roman originals, have been discovered in poor houses and in mean villages.[1] They formed part, even there, of the ordinary environment of life.

They were not, as an eminent writer[2] calls them, 'a delicate exotic varnish.' Indeed, I cannot recognize in our Romano-British remains the contrast alleged by this writer 'between an exotic culture of a higher order and a vernacular culture of a primitive kind'.

There were in Britain splendid houses and poor ones.

But a continuous gradation of all sorts of houses and all degrees of comfort connects them, and there is no discernible breach in the scale.