1 where they were to be placed, no machinery | tremity. This road was travelled as late as could have been required to transport them. the last century by the packhorses which They are sometimes roughly scored in pat carried goods between Newcastle and Cartern, but are rarely if ever found inscribed lisle, and is still the track preferred, for its with words, letters, or figures. All these firmness, its dryness, and the softness of its particulars are to be borne in mind for future herbage, by the sheep and by mural pilgrims application. like ourselves. But the whole region was crossed in every direction by military roads. A direct line of communication was drawn east and west, a little south of the Vallum, which is now known in many places under the name of the Stanegate. Horsley believed that the northern agger of the Vallum was itself a road; but recent investigations do not tend to support this opinion. The Romans advanced into Caledonia by three routes east, west, and central. The Stanegate, the Vallum, and the Wall were all cut at right angles, near a place called Halton Chesters, by the Watling Street, along which numerous stations or camps were formed, stretching in a lengthened chain through Yorkshire, Durham, and Northumberland, and indicating perhaps the spots on which the first Roman invaders rested night after night in their progress northward. Many of these halting-places have never been anything more than mere ramparts of turf thrown up for the purpose of the moment, or occupied occasionally for summer quarters (castra æstiva); a great number, however, have been. retained in permanent use, and have been strongly cased with masonry at some period of the Roman domination (castra stativa). These stations have been crowded with buildings, arranged in streets, and adorned with baths and temples. Such, for instance, was the station of Bremenium, or High Rochester, in Redesdale; the excavation of which, though on a smaller scale, may vie in interest with that which has taken place within the last year at Wroxeter.* But the narrow limits of the military fortress were not always sufficient to contain the population which thronged to it for shelter. Towns of considerable size seem, as at Borcovicus or Housesteads, to have grown up under the protection of the stationary garrisons, and the inscribed and sculptured stones, as well as coins, which have been discovered in them, show that they continued to be places of im Along the line of this wall were planted a number of small turrets, clearly described by the old writers, but of which hardly one dubious vestige now remains. Besides these watchtowers, at distances of about a Roman mile enclosures were constructed about twenty yards square, fortified with masonry similar to that of the wall itself, upon which they abutted. These enclosures, or milecastles, which seem to have been full of buildings, were, no doubt, occupied by the defenders of the wall. In the time of Horsley (1730) there were considerable remains of several of them, but at present a few only can be distinctly traced in mounds of turf, and some of these have been carefully exhumed by Mr. Clayton, while the greater number have been so nearly obliterated that Mr. Maclauchlan, the author of the recent survey, could only discover them by knowing the distance at which they were to be looked for successively. It is remarkable that Horsley affirmed of these mile-castles that they had no openings to the north; the few that have been restored present, on the contrary, gateways about nine feet wide both to the north and south. The masonry of the gates was better finished and far more solid than that of the walls, as if the fiercest attack of the enemy was generally to be apprehended at the entrances. We observe with surprise that even on the summit of the most precipitous crags the mile-castles have still a broad aperture to the north, as if to afford an easy ingress as well as egress, even where we should least contemplate either the one or the other. In more level ground it might be not less important to make a place of refuge accessible than to speed a battalion on its errand of slaughter or devastation; but at such spots as we have mentioned we can hardly imagine the application of either of these uses, and must be satisfied with supposing that so many dozen mile-castles were commanded after a certain pattern, and exe-portance for several generations. cuted accordingly, without respect to any difference of circumstances. It is interesting to be thus brought face to face with the redtape of antiquity. The turrets and mile-castles along the wall were connected together by a road, built after the Roman fashion upon a foundation of stones, which may still be traced in many parts of the central districts, though perhaps wholly obliterated towards either ex It is, however, with the chain of camps *For the careful investigation of Bremenium, the most northerly walled station occupied by the Romans in Britain, the antiquary is indebted to the generosity of the Duke of Northumberland. The extensive excavations made on occasion of the meeting of the Archæological Institute at Newcastle in 1852, were carried out at his Grace's exdiscovered are preserved in his Museum at Alapense, and the numerous inscriptions and relics wick Castle. (Housesteads) will be the Pompeii of Britain.' These, too, are 'brave words,' but those who have listened to the hierophant in his own holy place, expounding the mysteries of stones and earth-works, reading the grim fur rows of the dolabra into classic Latin, showing traces of ancient life and manners in wheel-ruts, mill-stones, and conical ballistashot, and revealing the secret history of the first and second period of occupation,' will hardly leave the spot without catching a portion of the religio loci, and mentally voting to their eloquent teacher the honours of a mural crown. which stretches across the isthmus, and forms an important part of the general system of the limitary fortifications, that we are now principally concerned. Of these camps as many as fourteen are connected together by the Wall and Vallum; the Wall generally taking their northern face, and the Vallum more commonly striking them in flank, and allowing itself to be broken by them. Seven more may be traced in the immediate vicinity of the rampart to the south, while some others, at a few miles distance both north and south, may have contributed to the support of the whole system of defences. Most, if not all of these, appear to have been stative The form and character of these stations camps, and many of them to have subse- are a pledge, independent of the remains quently developed into towns; but the stone found within them, of their genuine Roman ramparts they once possessed have in most origin; but this fact is curiously illustrated cases disappeared, or have been overthrown by the statements of the Notitia Dignitaand almost buried under the ruins of the tum,' the Red-book of the empire at the bebuildings. In some of them excavations ginning of the fifth century. In the chapter have been repeatedly made, with important of this work which gives an account of the results, as at Chesters, the seat of Mr. Clay- military establishments in Britain, there octon, at Chesterholm, and at Burdoswald; curs a list of the stations per lineam Valli.' but Housesteads, which stands in the centre These, it seems, were twenty-three in numof the line, and almost at its highest eleva- ber; but as there is no statement of their tion, enjoys a pre-eminent interest in our being actually connected with the ramparts, eyes, for, by the judicious operations of its nor that they are recited in the order of intelligent owner, its walls have been brought their position, nor whether, if so, the enumeclearly out, with face and core intact, to the ration is from the east or the west, our earlier height of six or eight courses all round. On antiquaries had no clue for identifying them such a spot the enthusiasm of every explorer with existing remains, except the fallacious bubbles over. Even before the excavation one of similarity in name. Thus Camden of the walls the general features of the and his commentator Gibson assigned Segemighty ruin caused Sandy Gordon to ex-dunum to Seton or Seghill, Pons Eli to claim, This is unquestionably the most remarkable and magnificent station in the whole island.'....It is hardly credible what a number of august remains of the Roman grandeur is to be seen here at this day, seeing in every place where one casts his eye there is some curious antiquity to be seen; either in the marks of streets and temples in ruins, or inscriptions, broken pillars, statues, and other pieces of sculpture all scattered along the ground.' Stukeley, in the vehemence of his admiration, denominated Housesteads the Tadmor of Britain. Dr. Bruce, more intelligent, but not less ardent, desires us to moderate our expectations: There is much,' he says, 'to admire, but not a great deal to strike at first sight. The altars and sculptured figures which lay in profusion on the ground when Gordon and Stukeley were there, have been removed [to the Museum at Newcastle], but the ruins of the place remain as complete and vast as ever. The city is in a great measure covered with its own débris, but the excavations which have been recently made show us that, when they are continued throughout the entire station, the entire Borcovicus Ponteland, Procolitia to Colecester or Prudhoe, Borcovicus to Borwick, Tunnocelum to Tynemouth; while they identified Axellodunum, Amboglanna, Aballaba, and Petriana, on no other ground, with places so distant from the Wall as Hexham, Ambleside, Appleby, and Penrith respectively. It may be a warning to topographers to hear that not one of these conjectures can be actually sustained. The only lucky hit that Camden made in this respect was in identifying Cilurnum with Chollerford; but the proof of this is found, not in the similarity of name, but in the discovery of an inscription on the spot. The inscription on an altar excavated within the camp at this place records, not the name, indeed, of the station, but that of the detachment, ala II. Asturum,' which we know to have occupied it. For the Notitia' gives us, with the name of each station, the designation of the battalion attached to it, and this enables us to determine with certainty several localities, to ascertain the order of enumeration, and hence to identify with confidence other places of the series. We have no doubt that Segedunum, the first station named, was Wall's-end, where are the easternmost re mains of Roman fortification, and not Bowness at the western extremity; for here we find an altar dedicated to Jupiter by the prefect of the fourth cohort of Lingones (Gauls from Langres), and here, according to the 'Notitia,' was the fourth cohort of Lergi (Lergorum, an unknown name, and pretty clearly a corruption of Lingonum).* We have no such means of identifying Pons Alii with Newcastle; but Newcastle is the second station westward, and Pons Eli the second name in the Notitia,' and here, besides the numerous coins of Ælius Hadrianus found on the spot, the eastern road of the Romans crossed the Tyne by a bridge, the foundations of which have, it is said, been observed in modern times. But Condercum, the third station of the 'Notitia,' was guarded by the first troop of Astures, and at Benwell, the third camp on the line proceeding westward, a stone so inscribed has been discovered. We can only identify Vindobala the fourth, and Hunnum the fifth station, with a fourth and fifth camp at Rutchester and Halton Chesters, by their position between Condercum and Cilurnum; but, again, we have documentary proof that Procolitia, with its first cohort of Batavians, was at Carrawburgh, and Borcovicus, the camp of the first cohort of Tungri, at Housesteads. All these stations are on the actual line of Wall; Vindolana, the ninth in the 'Notitia,' shown by inscriptions to be Chesterholm, lies more than a mile to the south of it. The evidence about the next station, Esica, is less clear, but we have no hesitation in identifying it, by analogy, with Great Chesters, and Magna with Carvoran. Beyond these, Amboglanna is proved to be Birdoswald, from an inscription recording the first cohort of Dacians. The aid of these legionary inscriptions now fails us, but we have acquired the key of the problem, and from the careful examination of local remains we may pronounce, at least with some confidence, that Petriana is Walton. Beyond this point Dr. Bruce abstains from giving a decided judgment, and Mr. Maclauchlan's more recent survey still leaves us in some uncertainty about the exact claim of the ten stations which still remain to be accounted for. This, indeed, is a large proportion of the whole number to be accommodated within less than one-third of the direct distance from sea to sea, and it seems probable that some of these stations, mentioned at the end of the list, may refer to localities more remote from the Wall. It is remarkable that We observe that Böcking, in his admirable edition of the Notitia, adopts Lingonum without hesitation, as the true reading. Luguvallium, which is generally presumed to be Carlisle, is not mentioned among the stations per lineam Valli' at all. It should be known that this beautiful induction from theNotitia' is due, as far as it goes, to Horsley, the prince of antiquarians, whose topographical genius was never more happily exercised than in this his native country. The intimations of the Notitia, illustrated by inscriptions and sculptures on the spot, rude though they generally are, afford us some curious glimpses of the Romans in Britain. It appears that of the legions employed and permanently stationed in the island, three-the second (the August), the Sixth (the Victorious, Pious, and Faithful), and the Twentieth (the Brave and Victorious) -were engaged in the conquest and defence of this district, and that they were assisted, perhaps, but ultimately displaced, by bands of auxiliaries from the most distant quarters of the empire, by Gauls at Segedunum and Vindolana, Asturians at Esica and Cilurnum, by Germans, Dacians, Thracians, Moors, and Dalmatians, at other points. In short, not less than eighteen or twenty different nationalities seem to have been represented in the narrow belt of fortifications that crossed the lower isthmus. We meet with no trace in this record of British hands being employed to maintain the tranquillity of Britain; but at one spot, near Thirlwall Castle, the place where, according to tradition, the Wall was penetrated (thirled) by the Pictish invaders, we have remarked on a stone built into a farmhouse, the letters coн DUMNONI, showing apparently that the men of Devonshire were charged at this point with the defence of Roman interests against the assertors of British freedom, and proved nobly false' to their trust.* While the inscriptions in which the legions are recorded generally give the name of the emperor or of the consuls, there seems to be no notification of time on our monuments, from which to infer how While foreign battalions were employed in Britain, some of the most distant provinces were held for Rome by Britons. We learn from the Notitia that a squadron of British horse was stationed in Egypt A cohort of Britons, the twenty-sixth, was quartered in Armenia. There were Elder Britons' in Illyricum, and 'Invincible Younger Britons' in Spain, and many other bodies of the same nation in other localities. See Mr. Roach Our GovernSmith's Collectanea Antiqua, ii. 134. India, and employ Caffres, Malays, and Negros, ment has been counselled to imitate their policy in for the subjugation of the native races. We believe that in this, and almost every other particular, the Roman policy is inapplicable to our position and to our ideas. Sir H. Bartle Frere's observations on this point, in a recent memoir, are well deserving of great attention, and such they have no doubt received from the authorities. long these battalions of auxiliaries had occupied the stations where they were found at the date of the Notitia. There can be no doubt, however, that these latter records belong to a period when the legions of the old Roman army had ceased to have any existence, and their place was supplied by battalions and troops of barbarians from the frontier provinces. That these battalions continued to be recruited from their native districts respectively, and to retain their distinct nationality, may be inferred, perhaps, generally from the names of the deities they severally worshipped, of which numerous traces are discovered. These records, indeed, of the religion of our frontier garrisons show the same curious mixture of ideas and cults which was seething, as we all know, throughout the third and fourth centuries in every city of the empire. Along with the names of Teutonic or Celtic divinities, such as Mogontis, Vitires, Belatucadrus, and Taranus, we find the representatives of the old orthodox Olympus, Jupiter, Apollo, Mars, Minerva, and Hercules; while the worship of the sun, of Mithras, and Astarte, thrusts itself also into the temples of the farthest north, and a sentiment still more vague and faint finds satisfaction in invoking Nymphs, Fates, and Geniuses, the Dex Matres (or weird sisters), the Deæ Campestres, the Dea Transmarinæ, and, finally, all the Gods and Goddesses.' Rome herself, as may be supposed, and the genius of the Emperor, meet with due reverence in these military colonies. Though standing in the presence of barbarians by birth and origin, we feel that the spell of Roman civilization has passed over them. The Moors and Germans of the Mural camps spoke the language of Italy, and observed her customs; they were, perhaps, after all, as good Romans as half the denizens of the Velabrum and Suburra in their day. Their buildings, their fortifications, their arms and costume, were Roman. They enjoyed the bath, and warmed their dwellings with heated flues, like the Romans. Their habitual use of wheel-carriages is attested, exactly as at Pompeii, by the deeply-graven ruts across the thresholds of their gateways. They ate and drank off the same eternal red pottery; they ground their corn with the same gritty millstones from Andernach on the Rhine. That they had the true Roman taste for oysters is shown by the abundant testaceous remains about their dwellings; it is supposed that they transferred the 'natives' of Camulodunum and Rutupia to the coast of Yorkshire and Northumberland. Erdeswicke, in 1574, records another culinary tradition, relating to certain vegetables (chives, we believe) which the Romans are supposed to have introduced into the wilds of northern Britain, and which are still found in abundance near the well adjacent to the wall, where Paulinus is supposed to have baptised King Ecfrid.* The Skotts lyches or surgeons do yerely repayr to the said Roman wall to gather sundry herbs for surgery, for that it is thought that the Romaynes thereby had planted most nedeful herbes for sundry purposes, but howsomever it was, these herbs are found very wholesome."' It is likely enough that the exiled soldiers of the South cheered their hungry solitude by the cultivation of such products of their native soil as they could manage to acclimatize. Such, it is said, was the favourite practice of the Conquistadores of New Spain, when they settled down, one by one, on the estates they had won with so much blood and rapine. So, according to Humboldt, it is related of the valiant Andres de la Vega by his son Garcilasso, that he collected together all his old comrades within call to share with them three asparaguses, the first which ever grew on the table-land of Cuzco. On the whole, however, no reflection presses more strongly upon us, on visiting this cemetery of an ancient civilization, than how dark is the gloom which has settled on the life, manners, and ideas of the people whom it once enlightened. The inscribed stones picked up here, as elsewhere, shed but a feeble glimmer on the obscurity. The personages mentioned are sometimes emperors and prefects, sometimes soldiers of inferior grades; once or twice we meet with the record of a wife or child, of the simple and touching character which bespeaks their Roman connexion; once or twice a medical attendant on the camp is honourably remembered; but there is no trace, we believe, of any mere civilian, none certainly of a civil officer; nor is there any sign of this tract of country having been placed under civil goverument at all. In this respect, indeed, the region of the Wall is not very differently circumstanced from other parts of our island, and we are driven, as we have before intimated, to the conjecture, that Britain was held more entirely by the sword than most of the Roman dependencies. However strange this nay seem, our perplexity is still greater on observing here, as in the rest of Britain, an almost total absence of the monuments of Christianity. 'If the authority of certain writers,' says Mr. Wright, 'be worth anything, we must take it for granted that, at least, after the age of Constan The plant was probably preserved through the occupation of the adjoining spot, at Walltown, by an ancient fortalice, the property of the Ridleys, the family of the martyr. tine, Roman Britain was a Christian country; that it was filled, with churches, clergy, and bishops; and, in fact, that paganism had been abolished throughout the land. We should imagine that the invaders, under whom the Roman power fell, found nothing but Christian altars to overthrow and Christian temples to demolish. It is hardly necessary to point out how utterly at variance such a statement is with the result of antiquarian researches. I have stated that not a trace of Christianity is found among the religious and sepulchral monuments of the Roman period.' And thence the writer proceeds to explain away the sole apparent exception known to him. We may mention, however, as connected with the district under consideration, a solitary instance of an object bearing the Christian monogram. This is a silver vase, found in proximity to Roman remains near Corbridge (Corstopitum). On this relic, hitherto unpublished, the monogram, composed of the Greek Chi and Rho, is found among the ornaments. The same, we are assured, may also be seen in the fine mosaic floor at Frampton, in Dorset. The local name of The Picts' Wall' represents the early tradition, that the great rampart of stone which spanned the isthmus from the Tyne to the Solway was erected as a defence against the Picts and Scots, tribes not known in history before the fourth century of our era. Such was the name, and such the origin of the name, adopted, without critical investigation, by our early historians. More recently it received the appellation of the Wall of Severus, to which Horsley, more especially, has given currency; but it has also been called by some the Wall of Hadrian; and the opinion that it was actually constructed by the Emperor Hadrian in the middle of the second century has been maintained by Dr. Collingwood Bruce, of Newcastle, with an amount of zeal and learning which has satisfied many of our most intelligent antiquarians. We observe, indeed, that this hypothesis is now commonly followed as the received doctrine of the day in the popular summaries of antiquities. The most cautious * Wright, Celt, Roman, and Saxon, p. 298. We can understand,' he adds, 'without difficulty, when we consider that this distant province was from its insular position far more independent of the central influence than other parts, why the new faith was slow in penetrating it, and was not readily adopted. No doubt, among the recruits who were sent to the Roman troops, and the strangers who visited the island as merchants or settlers, there must have been individuals who had embraced the truths of the Gospel. But we must bear in mind also, that the population of Britain, during the later period of the Roman power, seems to have been recruited more and more from the pagan tribes of Germany and the North' and discreet among us may still hesitate, and wait for further evidence; they may shrink from committing themselves to a theory which, in antiquarian matters more perhaps than any others, is likely to cramp and distort the judgment, and incapacitate it for the impartial reception of fresh evidence; nevertheless all must feel how much is due to the genius and enthusiasm which, if they overleap the ordinary bounds of sober discretion, communicate the electric shock of sympathy from man to man, and give the most effectual truths in science would perhaps have ever impulse to the discovery of truth. No great been discovered at all if we had had only patient observers, and no imaginative theorists. The interest which has attached to Dr. Bruce's labours, in his own neighbourhood, and among antiquarians generally, has been due partly to his explorations and discoveries themselves, partly to the attractiveness of his hypothesis, but most of all perhaps to his personal character, his industry and eloquent enthusiasm, and the fascination exercised by an old experience,' which may fairly be thought sagacity. to have attained to something of intuitive For ourselves, we are hearers only; if we cannot at once accept Dr. Bruce's theory, we should at least be ashamed to assert another of our own. We are content to wait for con viction, whether from the discovery of new sources of evidence, or from the gradual clearng away of the mists of contradictory testimony which beset the rival hypotheses on the subject. We shall be satisfied for the present if, by placing the conflicting testimonies, direct and indirect, before the reader, we can succeed in imparting to him any of the strange fascination which the question exercises on our own minds. But if he should be topographically disposed, and in search of a little pleasurable excitement, let him take a train some early day to the North, and study it on the spot. 'Solvitur ambulando' is the best of maxims for the investigation of antiquarian puzzles. The Roman armies, in their advance into a barbarous country, were accustomed to raise earthen ramparts round the camps in which they rested between successive days' marches. If they intended, as was generally the case, to return for a second or third campaign, they opened pathways through the woods or across the morasses, marked out by two parallel trenches, and to these they gave the name of limites. If they contemplated a more permanent occupation, they proceeded to build a road in place of the limes, excavating the loose soil between the trenches, and filling in the space with successive layers of concrete and squared stones, raised often to a considerable |