Still, it is a human, rather than a literary or artistic interest, that attaches to the best of them; 'sermons in stones,' we might almost call them; for they form a kind of ill-arranged common-place book upon the life and doings of northern Britain during three centuries of Roman rule: a book hard to interpret, since its thousand authors wrote independently, at widely different times, and in widely sundered places; hard also to piece together, since many a page has yet to be recovered, and many a page is irrecoverably lost. Many a relic lies embedded in church or priory, castle or pele-tower in the neighbourhood of the wall; and many an inscription has been destroyed by the superstitious ignorance of early ages, or the utilitarian spirit, which, though commonly supposed to be especially characteristic of modern times, is not a thing of to-day or yesterday-just as there were brave men before Agamemnon, so there were Philistines before Goliath ; illacrimabiles urgeantur.

Formerly the unsophisticated Cumbrian regarded all lettered stones as 'uncanny,'-possibly in fear lest they might contain spells and incantations from the mysterious rites of the dead heathen; and tablet or altar suffered accordingly, being 'brayed' into sand, to strew the farmhouse kitchen-floor. In some instances the Saxon builder has compromised matters with his conscience, and purged the stone of its paganism by covering sculpture and inscription with a hard coating of cement. Other memorials have fallen victims to the exigencies of the farmstead: in the Museum at Newcastle we may yet see a stone, bearing the effigy of a Roman soldier, which narrowly escaped so mean a destiny; for the figure stands in a hollow niche, and Stukely tells us that it was "condemned to make a pigtrough on; but some gentlemen, full timely, with a small sum, for the present reprieved him." But doubtless many a less fortunate stone has thus been degraded from the service of the Dii Manes, and put to

the base office of fattening bacon. The Moslem of fiction relieves his angry soul by desiring that dogs may defile the graves of his enemy's ancestors: to wish that pigs might make a dish of their gravestones would surely be no less potent and expressive a curse.

Nor have the celestial deities fared much better than the infernal. Holland, in his edition of Camden, describes an altar, which in Roman days did honour to the Syrian Goddess; but now, says he, "women beat their buckes upon it." Cleanliness, the proverb tells us, is next to godliness; and here we see the adage exemplified: first the temple, and presently the laundry. But even the Romans themselves are estopped from complaining against their successors: the temptation to use altars for quoins and building stones was often too great for them; and inscribed tablets were capital things to pave a floor with. Nor were the memorials of the dead respected, as witness the monument erected by the sorrowing Pusinna to her deceased husband, Dagvald, the Pannonian; for some sacrilegious hand of the next generation has ruthlessly chopped it into a circular hearthstone.

Of all the stones which have been preserved, whether by the pious care of early antiquaries, by the hand of Saxon or medieval mason, or by the kindly envelopment of the earth itself, those are most numerous which bear a dedication to some deity. Their number and variety reveal to us a perfect hotch-potch of religions, a medley of faiths dead and dying, which perhaps only Rome or Alexandria could have matched. Nowhere else were so many different nationalities permanently settled within such comparatively narrow limits Gauls and Dacians, Batavians and Spaniards, Tungrians and Dalmatians, Syrians and Moors were amongst the peoples who furnished garrisons for the forts: a certain infusion of these races must have tinged the civil population also; for every year, no doubt, some of the time-expired soldiers would settle upon farms in the fertile valleys

of the Tyne and Irthing, or, it may be, set up shop or tavern in Luguvallum, Corstopitum or Pons Aelii. Sepulchral inscriptions add to our list with records of Rhaetians, Noricans, Pannonians, and the like: here we meet with one from Traianopolis, here with a man of Nicomedia, or a native of Tusdrus in the province of Africa. At certain spots were planted colonies of Britons, transported hither from the south; and, as time ran on, the Romanized elements amongst the original Brigantian and Otadene clans must gradually have increased. All these races, to a greater or less degree, adopted the official religion of their masters; and most of them grafted upon it uncouth gods of their own, which are sometimes addressed separately, and sometimes identified with more familiar familiar Roman deities, as though the vanquished gods, as well as their worshippers, had learnt to put on the garments of civilization. Nor was this all; for, to make confusion yet more confounded, there was an interchange of deities amongst the subject races themselves,―as, for example, at Condercum, where we find an Asturian regiment restoring the temple of the Three Mothers of the Plains, these latter being of distinctively Teutonic origin. Nor were the Romans themselves less indiscriminately pious; but, whenever they met with a new god, they had at least some odds and ends of devotion to bestow upon him,-some attic or cellar ready for him in the misty palace of Olympus; a compensation, no doubt, for the discourtesy they had done him by conquering his ancient worshippers in spite of their prayers for his assistance.

In many cases polite obsequiousness joins the reigning emperor to Jupiter or Mars,-no great compliment to either, in some cases, unless the 'numina Augustorum' were more worshipful than their bodily manifestations. In other instances philosophy, or ignorance, personifies and worships an abstraction,the Genius of the Camp, the Wall, or the Standards,

or even the plain Standards themselves, as was done by the First or Faithful Cohort of Vardulli, which seems to have been a somewhat sceptical regiment. Here and there one special cult held sole, or at least preeminent, sway; here and there the average is restored by a more than usually comprehensive dedication,-"To Jupiter, best and greatest," for example, "and all the rest of the immortal gods;" or, as on a tablet erected at Borcovicum by the Second Cohort of Tungrians, "To all the gods and goddesses, as directed by the oracle of the Clarian Apollo." It must have surely been some extraordinary perplexity, which drove a Teutonic Cohort, stationed in northern Britain, to apply to an Ionian oracle for advice.

Jupiter is, of course, the deity most frequently addressed; and the number of his altars found at Birdoswald and Maryport seems to indicate the existence of temples in his honour at each of these places. One altar is dedicated to Jupiter Capitolinus, another to Jupiter Serapis; and in many places,-never far from spots where coal crops out, or where some kind of ore lies near the surface,-altars have been found inscribed to Jupiter Dolichenus, the special patron of miners, so called of Doliche in Thessaly, 'ubi ferrum nascitur,' as a continental inscription informs us.

In a district garrisoned by so large a force, Mars naturally holds an important place; and to Mars we find many altars dedicated,-to Mars pure and simple, to Mars Militaris, and to Mars Victor. To him we may possibly allot an altar found near Carlisle, which gives us one of those brief glimpses of a forgotten history, so interesting in their suggestiveness, and so tantalizing in their brevity. The heading of the inscription has been cut away; but the name of the dedicator, and the occasion of the dedication are still to be read;"ob res trans vallum prospere gestas,"-a successful battle or campaign north of the Wall. Surely there is a story hidden here: indeed we might

construct twenty to fit the fragment, as easily as we might build fairy tales upon the words "They lived happily ever after." But let the episode be brimful of moving accidents, and let the hairsbreadth 'scapes be of the narrowest: let us manoeuvre Lucius Victorinus into horrible danger-send him reconnoitring, let us say, and throw him into an ambuscade, in some Caudine Forks beside Liddesdale, or make him all but a second Varus in the woods of Dumfriesshire. There let him stand, encouraging his men with much outwards calmness, but mentally vowing the finest altar, that ever mason made, or sculptor carved, if Mars will but bring him out of the difficulty with life and honour. And presently trumpets shall be heard in the distance; and the Sixth Legion, the Victorious, Pious, and Faithful, shall come swinging up to his relief; and there shall be great slaughter of Caledonians, and a happy ending to our romance.

Of the worship of other well-known deities, there are less frequent, but still sufficient traces. A large altar, which was dredged from the Tyne at Newcastle, is dedicated to Neptune by the Sixth Legion, and perhaps records the fulfilment of a vow made by a seasick detachment during the horrors of a stormy passage across the North Sea. Apollo, under his title of Maponus, may have had a temple at Hexham, Minerva at Rochester in Redesdale-the Roman Bremenium. Many altars bear inscriptions to Fortune, several to Fortunae Conservatrix; and, to judge by the places where these were unearthed, it was fashionable to have an altar to Fortune in one's villa— a kind of ornament for the front hall. But we can well understand the importance of gaining the goddess' goodwill in this wild region, where, no doubt, wealth and prosperity would be more than ever apt to take wing. Fortune is no bicyclist; for, the rougher the road, the faster she turns her wheel.

Hercules also had his worshippers, and with his

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