Volume 74 — THE ROMANS IN SCOTLAND.[6]

THE ROMANS IN SCOTLAND.^[6]

Some forty years ago, in the windy muirlands of the parish of Lesmahago, in Lanarkshire, a stepping-stone in a burn, where the cattle crossed from one field to another, attracted attention by an odd phenomenon. A smooth, rounded, moderate-sized stone it had appeared, since it had been noticed at all—coloured a greenish brown by infusoria, like the other water-worn lumps of clay-slate in the district. But this stone was seen to receive a peculiar indentation on its surface from the pressure of the cattle’s feet, not of a kind exemplified on water-worn stones in general. As to the inquiring peasant, in whom this phenomenon created a curiosity not to be gratified without an excavation, the annals of archæology are silent. It is only known that the curiously indented stone was removed with some difficulty, when, behold, it resolved itself into the figure and material of a plated claret jug, from which the silver had, by long exposure, been removed. This was odd enough—a claret jug in such a place, and trodden on, for no one knew how many years, by cattle and their herds! But a deeper mystery remained behind, for, on examination, the vessel was found to be an undoubted Roman work, to be made of bronze, in that beautiful egg-shape, sweeping with an ogee curve towards the neck, so remarkable in the best Etruscan vases; while on the gracefully-formed handle there was a piece of legendary sculpture, harmonising in the artistic beauty of its outlines with the form of the vessel. It may now be seen in the Hunterian Museum in Glasgow, with the indentation made by the hoofs of cattle on its side, and the beautiful little bit of sculpture—seemingly Mercury in the upper department, and Minerva with the helmet and bird of wisdom in the lower—as it was buried among the pebbles of the burn in Lesmahago—for how long, let the person who may have dropped it there tell.

To us there appears to be something infinitely interesting and impressive in such casual, and accidentally and strangely discovered vestiges of the great empire which ramified itself so far into the wilderness; and we confess to the weakness that we never could see any of these scanty relics of the uncertain frontiers of the empire, without feeling much more interest and emotion than chambers full of marble sculpture, pottery, and bronzes, could call forth in other places. There is a character about them all, scanty as they may be deemed, which at once, in the eye even of the uninstructed, removes them from anything, either in an early or a late age, belonging to the indigenous workmanship of the country. Occasionally our earth has yielded one of the glittering relics which fallen empires leave as types of their old lustre beneath the dust of their decay, and a gold or silver coin, bearing the image and superscription of an Antoninus Pius, a Severus, or a Caracalla, has been revealed by the plough of the hind, or the mattock of the railway labourer. But, though he may take it to the nearest change-house for criticism, the finder will not irreverently dream of passing it off as a convertible medium, however it may bear a mysterious resemblance to the current coin of the realm. There are indications that both in early and recent times—among the learned, the peasantry, and the citizens—a sort of unconscious homage has been paid to Roman remains, as they have, from time to time, been revealed—an acknowledgment, as it were, of their high rank among the fragmentary memorials of past ages, and departed dynasties and races. Walking down the High Street of Edinburgh, nearly opposite to Knox’s house, there may, on the other side of the street, be seen, in fine preservation, two heads, cut in low relief, indisputably Roman, from the simple severity of the sculpture. The house in which they are imbedded is old enough to have seen many historical events; but the sculpture carries tokens that it was taken charge of, and valued, at a still earlier period; for between the two heads there is inserted an inscription, in Gothic character, older perhaps than any house in Edinburgh. And so this far, at all events, seems evident of the medallions of the Roman emperor and his wife, that they had decorated some structure still older than the old Edinburgh house—probably in some one of the ecclesiastical buildings which fell to pieces after the Reformation; and perhaps the builder of the house adopted them as more artistic and modern-looking than the other relics of Gothic masonry in the ruin—little dreaming that the builder of the medieval edifice looked on them with mysterious awe as relics of some early unknown school of art, with which he was incapable of competing.

In nothing, perhaps, is the immediate acknowledgment of superiority, which fragments of Roman art have created in our country, more remarkable than in the ecclesiastical seals which it has lately become the pride of our archæologists to preserve. There, one may often see in the midst of the rude Gothic tracery of the fourteenth century, an outline scarce distinguishable on the surface of the mouldering wax; yet evidently adjusting itself, as it were, by some capricious accident, to the pure forms of older art, in a head, or nude figure, a lion or an equipped Roman warrior. Examination shows that these are no ideal creations, from worn outlines fancifully adjusted to artistic forms like faces in the fire, but that old entaglio gems had been inserted in the matrices of the seals; and that their beauty should have been appreciated is the more remarkable, that they are in their rigid simplicity so strongly in contrast even with the merits of that florid decoration which the early seal-cutters took from the architectural types of their age. We believe that a minute inquiry would bring forth many fragments of Roman work incrusted into our older buildings; and we could point to one instance where a piece of sculpture—of Priapeian character—does duty, after some slight liberties having been taken with it, as a representation of an illustrious national hero. Sandy Gordon, as he is called by Monkbarns, when he prowled about Scotland grubbing in various corners for the materials of his inimitable Itinerarium Septentrionale, was ever finding Roman altars and sculpture imbedded in obscure private houses; and it must be commendably said of their builders that they did the best they could to save these relics from destruction. Some of these have been lost or obliterated during the century and a quarter elapsing since the publication of the Itinerarium; but others have, through the influence of that work, found a more public and secure place of deposit. Thus a sculptured and inscribed stone, which Gordon pronounced one of the best in Scotland, when found at Duntocher, was elevated to the dignity of decorating the gateway of Kochney House, and has thence been transferred to the Hunterian Museum of Glasgow. “At the house of Nether Croy,” says Mr Stuart, “situated on the low grounds to the north of Croyhill, are two pieces of Roman sculpture and a votive altar, which are said to have been found in the immediate vicinity of the height in question. The former are placed in the wall of the building—the latter stands in a green plot immediately adjoining.” In the funny little museum in the semicircular building at Perth—the sybilistic Latin inscription on which has sometimes driven curious travellers frantic to discover its purport—there is a stone slab with sculpture as mysterious. It may, however, be guessed from the triumphal car and figure, and the leopards, that it represents a Bacchus. This vestige of ancient polytheism long occupied the uncongenial position of a hearthstone in a peasant’s cottage in Strathmore. But whether it was so preserved from respect to its artistic interest, or from the convenience of its form, may be doubted. In the middle of the sixteenth century, some Roman remains were discovered at Musselburgh; among them an altar dedicated to Apollo by a certain proconsul Quintus Lusius Sabiniarius, no doubt a highly respectable man and efficient officer, though history has failed to commemorate his merits. The excitement and attention created by this discovery are curious, and show, in a remarkable shape, that interest which has ever attached to the vestiges of the Roman presence in Scotland. In Queen Mary’s Treasury Accounts for 1565, there is an entry of twelve pence, “to ane boy passand of Edinburgh with ane charge of the Queene’s Grace, direct to the Baillies of Mussilburgh charging thame to tak diligent heid and attendance, that the monument of Grit antiquitie now fundin be nocht demolisit nor broken down.” Randolph, the English ambassador, influenced, perhaps, by the fuss he saw made about the matter, deemed the discovery worthy of a special note stuck into the midst of matters of a very different character; and so he writes to Cecil, who probably was a little surprised at finding his cunning correspondent occupied with such a trifle, that “the cave found bysyd Muskelbourge seemeth to be some monument of the Romaynes, by a stone that was found with these words graven upon hym,” &c. This altar was noticed by the all-observing Camden, and more philosophically commemorated by Napier of Merchiston, as appropriate to the idols of Pagan Rome, in his commentary on the Apocalypse.

And having noticed these instances of respect paid to the vestiges of mighty Rome, perhaps the picture will only be rendered the more complete by telling of the retaliation which followed a signal action of disrespect to a relic of the illustrious strangers. Who has not heard of Arthur’s Oon on the Carron in Stirlingshire? now, alas! obliterated. It was fortunately seen by Sandy Gordon, who, in his matter-of-fact engravings, has evidently preserved its appearance—lapidatim, if we may use the term—though not in the best of perspective. It was a dome, following on a small scale the form of the Pantheon, with a circular opening at the top. It was a diminutive building twenty-two feet only in height, with an outer circumference of some thirty yards or so, and an arched door about nine feet high. Keeping these dimensions in view, it does not resemble any other Roman building that we remember to have heard of. In dimensions and structure, it has features in common with the curious beehive houses to be found in some of the ancient Irish burial-grounds; but then, these are of the roughest of unworked stones, while Arthur’s Oon was laid in courses accurately hewn. Granting an eccentric and peculiar building to be Roman, the usual solution of its purpose is to count it a tomb, for the Romans were eccentric, like ourselves, in the commemorations which they raised over the dead, and often departed from systematic characteristics. Of course there has been abundance of conjecture as to the origin and object of so peculiar a building. Its name, Arthur’s Oon, has been read as a corruption of Arthur’s oven, as if it were the circular baking-place where that hospitable prince appropriately prepared the viands consumed at his round table by the chivalrous company there assembled; but this is a theory to which the more learned antiquaries of late times give little encouragement. Diodorus Siculus tells us, on the authority of a writer venerable in his day, whom he calls Hecatæus, that there is over against Celtic Gaul an island as large as Sicily, inhabited by the Hyperborians. The tradition of the natives says that Latona was born there—whence they have a partiality for the worship of Apollo. To this their favourite deity they dedicated a wonderful temple, of a round form, intrusting the custody of it to the descendants of Boreas, with a fitting establishment of priests and bards, who are represented as constantly doing duty within the sacred precincts. If we should maintain that here we have the original history of Arthur’s Oon, we defy any one to disprove it; and this kind of negative impossibility is, we have generally found, the main strength of archæological theories. It would be eminently satisfactory too, as carrying the structure back into an unknown antiquity, far before the Roman invasions. It requires, however, the peculiar capacities of the Irish antiquary to fight out a theory of this sort, simple though it may seem, and we shall therefore content ourselves with a tacit assent to those who believe the structure to have been Roman.

Here there would be a steady enough foundation in the unanimity with which all the earlier annalists attribute the lost structure to Roman origin, were they not so diverse in the specific period to which they refer it. Still, the early period at which it was held to be an interesting Roman antiquity is remarkable. That questionable gentleman Nennius tells us as explicitly as possible that Carausius built on the banks of the Carron a round house of polished stone, as a triumphal arch in memory of his victory, while he rebuilt the wall between the Forth and Clyde, and fortified it with seven castles. John Major is as distinct in his assertion that it was built by Julius Cæsar, adding the strange gloss that it was an imitation of Hercules when he placed his triumphal pillars in the south of Spain. That inveterate old story-teller Hector Boece is not less specific in stating that it was raised by Vespasian in honour of his predecessor Claudius, and that it covers the ashes of the highly respected and distinguished officer Aulus Plautius. Hector, however, mentions some other little particulars, which, if true, are decidedly to the point;—as that in his day the effigy of a Roman eagle was visible, cut in the pavement, and there stood within the building a stone sacrificial altar. Sir Robert Sibbald, the naturalist and historian, probably having his imagination heightened by this statement—declared that with a lighted link he could trace the outline of an eagle’s head, and that he could also trace something extremely like the figure of a Victory. Moreover, he saw certain letters which, with a diffidence unprecedented and unimitated in the antiquarian world, he declared to be to him (Sir Robert) quite unintelligible.

Thus, Arthur’s Oon—a building so diminutive in itself that a fac-simile of it, identical in dimensions, formed a cupola for the stables of that zealous antiquary Sir James Clerk of Penicuik—became one of the wonders of the world. So it was esteemed when the proprietor of the estate in which it stood, not having the fear of the antiquarian world before his eyes, but desiring some good hewn stone for the purpose of flagging a mill-dam, and believing that he could do what he liked with his own, took Arthur’s Oon to pieces. The mill-dam which he built was carried off by a flood—a just judgment, as it was deemed, on its sacrilegious owner; and the hewn stones of Arthur’s Oon have for nearly a century been buried in silt, or tossed about and rounded by the water of the stream. The antiquarians were loud in their wail, and propagated their indignant grief far around. They had even resort to the medium—uncongenial for their usual purpose—of caricature, and the destroyer of the circular temple was represented as the victim of every kind of ludicrous retaliation, which the invention of gentlemen whose artistic line, however, lay chiefly in crockets, mouldings, and fragmentary sculpture, could devise. Posterity and other nations took up the cry. We remember that, when the representative of the original victim stood for a Scottish constituency after the passing of the Reform Bill, it was stated against him, with mysterious emphasis, that he was the descendant of the destroyer of Arthur’s Oon; and we saw the whole delinquency specifically described as a sort of celebrated crime in the work of a German historian, published within the past five years. We are the more anxious to draw attention to this instance of heavy and protracted retribution, that we would desire it to stand forth as an example, warning others, as the Scottish indictments do, against committing the like crime in time coming. Let all and every person or persons, body corporate or politic, see what it is thoughtlessly or obstinately to destroy any portion of the country’s treasury of antiquities.

“Oh be its weight like lead to lead

Upon its dull destroyer’s head,”

was Sir Walter Scott’s minstrel’s malison against such an offender; and we cannot help remembering that at this moment one of the finest specimens of Gothic architecture left by the destroyers of a former age, lies in a carefully preserved and arranged heap, ready to be put together again if its restoration may be permitted. We must admit that, in general, the Scottish gentry have shown a praiseworthy anxiety to preserve all remains of the mighty Romans, justly judging the interest attached to them to be very high, however insignificant their relics may appear. Nor are they all, by any means, of a kind that would be deemed insignificant, even in the richer mines of Roman antiquities nearer the seat of empire. For instance, the following description of a sculptured slab found in a farm, near the Duntocher station, on Antonine’s Wall, is full of promise to the artist as well as the archæologist:—

“In a certain freedom of execution and simplicity of design, we have seen nothing superior, throughout the entire assemblage of our Roman inscriptions. A plain raised border surrounds the stone, within which, in the lower centre of the field, appear two winged Victories, each resting one foot upon a globe, and jointly supporting, with their raised hands, an oblong tablet bearing the inscription. On either side of the Victories stands a Roman soldier—the one holding a spear, and leaning on his scutum, or long-shaped buckler—the other supporting a small standard with his right hand, and carrying what appears to be a sheathed sword in his left. The former is no doubt intended for one of the Hastati or Principes, who carried long spears and oblong shields—the latter for a Vexillarius, with his Ensign displayed. In the first, the lorica or cuirass covering the body is perfectly distinct, and he stands before us in the full equipment of battle; the standard-bearer seems more lightly accoutred, while something like the fold of a scarf descends from his left shoulder. The head-dress of the two figures is rather singular, bearing a much greater resemblance to the bonnets of our Highland regiments than to the Roman galea or helmet. As, however, the legionary soldiers had a decided penchant for adorning the crests of their morions with feathers, we have here perhaps a specimen of the length to which, in this respect, their tastes would sometimes lead them.”

This extract is taken from the work of one who devoted a thoughtful and inquiring mind to the classification and elucidation of the Roman remains in Scotland. It was the misfortune of a little circle of friends, who seem to have been deeply attached to him, to lose him from among them after the first edition of his work had achieved success, and while he was preparing an edition more extensive and complete, and more in accordance with his enthusiastic conception of the interest of the subject. Friends attached to his memory have filled up the little gaps which the author had left until some day that never was destined to dawn on him, and have edited the work for the benefit of his early left widow and children; and a pleasant book it is. Not that it contains a rapid and succinct history of events, or a brief and rigidly archæological investigation into the character of our Roman remains. Though it can stand inquiry for scholarship and full investigation, it is on the whole a dreamy and discursive book, and the dreaminess is of that sad, gentle, and somewhat plaintive kind, which might be supposed to come from one in whom the seeds of early dissolution had been sown. This is by no means uncongenial to the subject. Turning from imperial Rome, in her progressive rise and all-conquering greatness, as we stand in Italy and picture her spreading her power over the world—yet the view from the extremities which recalls to us how the Roman soldier, reared under the blue sky of Italy, among the vines and olives, amid temples and groves alive with sculpture, had been driven by imperious duty to spend long periods of life on desolate moors, swept by the bleak damp winds of Scotland, is one suggestive of saddened reflections. To a mind like Mr Stuart’s, and to other minds too, if they wander meditatively among these farthest relics of departed empire, their structure and nature, ever recalling the home characteristics and associations of the colonists, impart many touching appeals to sympathy. The prætor or centurion who had to take up his abode in some wild heath in the half-conquered dependency, would have as gaily tesselated a floor as the materials of the district would afford, to imitate as near as possible his villa by the warm shore of pleasant Baiæ. A few statues, however meagre and rude they might be, would still show the characteristic types of those dear to his sight in the streets of Rome or Pompeii. The structure of his villa followed the rich architecture which his fathers had adopted from the simpler Greek, and in his exile he forgot not to dedicate altars to his native deities—as many inscribed blocks of stone, with the sacrificial focus, flanked by the usual scroll decoration, can testify. Many of these curious and eloquent memorials were discovered in the cuttings of the Edinburgh and Glasgow Railway, which, like the Union Canal, followed the same line of country as the Roman engineer had adopted for a rampart and chain of forts. One of these, an insignificant slab near Castlecary, announces that the soldiers of the sixth legion—victorious, pious, and faithful, natives of Sicily, Italy, and Bavaria—pay their vow to the god Mercury.

“From the appearance of this altar, the form of the letters, the character of their combinations, and the number of arbitrary marks or dashes which it contains, we should suppose it to have been executed at a much later period than any of the stones which refer to the construction of the Wall. We have frequently had occasion to mention the Legio Sexta Victrix, but never with any particular knowledge of its history, until this little antique came forth from its long concealment, to tell us of the various nations which had contributed to swell its ranks. From the banks of the upper Danube, the plains of Megara or of Agrigentum, and from the bounteous fields of Italy herself, the young and the stout-hearted had been called, it would appear, to experience a long, if not a perpetual exile, in the comparatively inglorious and harassing service of defending the Caledonian frontier. As the Sixth legion is supposed to have remained for several centuries in Britain, it is most probable that numbers of those men, drafted from the south of Europe to recruit its ranks, were fated to pass their whole existence in this remote corner of the world. To many, such a prospect was perhaps far from repulsive, as they may have looked forward to the possession of some of those grants of land which were bestowed on the Roman soldier when his period of service was expired: still, the recollections of home and country had not, as we see, been altogether eradicated from among them, and often may the thoughts of the legionary veteran have rested upon the associations of his earlier days, when, as on the stone before us, the name of Sicily or Noricum was presented to his view.”

It must be remembered that these strangers were not momentary invaders; but that, more or less, they held ground in Scotland—sometimes only their forts and ramparts, at others, the wider fruit of recent conquest—for a period approaching three centuries; and that the works of Agricola, if he left any, must have been as much antiquities in the days of Constantius, as the castles connected with Mary are in the days of Victoria. Hence any vestiges of the manner in which they domestically adapted themselves to the wild north, have a utilitarian interest beyond that of mere association. After their villas and works of art, not the least important vestiges of their career are those which are supposed to indicate the use of their national luxury, the bath. Did the Italians indeed attempt, in these inhospitable regions, to indulge in a meagre imitation of those vast establishments, with their sudatories, caledaries, tepidaries, and frigidaries, and other costly aids of luxury, physical and mental, which in their remains astonish the tourist wandering southward? If we may believe the inferences which men not unskilled in archæology have drawn from discovered remains, the Romans erected a substantial bath so far northward as the rocky promontory of Burgh-head, stretching into the Moray Firth. That here there was a Roman station—castra stativa; and that the Moray Firth, with its line of lakes so far, and the highland mountains in continuation, formed the aræ finium of the Roman empire, is one of the matters which admit of very pretty antiquarian criticism and debate. One curious argument on the question we shall at once dispose of, as characteristic of the kind on which archæological theories are sometimes founded. Thus antiquaries find that the ancient name of the place was Torryton or Torrydun, and give its northern etymology as meaning the town or fortress on the hill. Now, the Greek geographers give a certain Pteroton stratopedon as about the most northerly of the Roman stations in Britain. Here, then, they say, is a natural adaptation of the native Torryton into Pteroton. But—and it is seldom that etymology, which generally is allowed to run riot, can be so satisfactorily pulled up—the Greek name is but a translation of the Roman Alata Castra, or winged camp; and even an etymologist will hardly hold that the ancients would go round about through a Latin description, to find a Greek word resembling in sound the native name. As to external evidence of occupation, there have been Roman coins found in the neighbourhood; but money is a vagrant commodity; and while there have been other relics, of a disputable character, found as far northward as the entrance of Loch Ness, where, indeed, Camden mentions that a little treasury of Roman antiquities was discovered, yet there is no authentic inscription—the true test of occupancy—which has been discovered in these northern districts. But then there is the bath itself, which introduced this particular branch of the subject to our present notice. We take a lively interest in it, from having made, about a quarter of a century ago, a pilgrimage to inspect it. An accommodating sailor, lounging among the windy rocks which there jut into the ocean, took us through a narrow round-arched entrance into a square stone chamber, where a solid platform, of a couple of feet or so in width, surrounded the lower and narrower compartment, in which clear water, as from a spring, rose to about four feet from the platform. A slight incision or niche in one corner was characteristic of Roman work, as intended for the reception of the deity of the fountain. But otherwise there were no expressive marks of classical origin, unless the clean cutting of the stones and their accurate courses be so considered. The promontory was a favourite fortress of the Northmen, to whom undoubtedly so workmanlike an edifice could not be attributed. Scattered around the little fishing village were remains of old fortifications, which the scientific General Roy and others have set down as Roman. They are now, we believe, incapable of bearing witness in the question, scarcely a vestige of them remaining. But at the time to which we allude there were several fragments of considerable mounds strengthening the position to seaward, and the still fainter vestiges of ramparts, which, severing the promontory from the low neck of sandy land connecting it with the fruitful plains of Moray, had converted it into a petty Gibraltar. The site, however, is not like those of Roman camps, which were generally on central plains attached to a system of trunk highways, and the remains of mounds had none of the fastidious neatness of their square works. On the whole, we could only decide—and after consideration adhere to the decision—that the stone chamber either is or is not a Roman bath.

Remains more distinctly indicative of the adoption of their native luxury have been found near Inveresk, where the Romans were undoubtedly in permanent position.

“In the year 1783, whilst workmen were engaged in the improvement of some garden-ground, a short distance to the eastward of the church, they came, at the depth of two or three feet, on the floors and foundations of various buildings, which in course of their operations were laid open over an extent of 60 feet in length by 23 feet broad. The whole of this space was paved with a kind of mortar, known by the name of tarras, and was intersected at intervals by distinct traces of stone walls, among which might be observed the enclosures of two separate chambers, the evident remains of a Roman bath. The largest room measured 15 by 9 feet, the other 9 by 4½; and the floors of both were composed of a coating of tarras two inches thick, laid, in the case of the first, upon a layer of lime, gravel, and pieces of brick five inches deep, which again rested on a basement of irregular flag-stones—the whole being supported on rows of pillars two feet in height, some of them formed of stone, and others of brick; but in the smallest chamber the coarse substratum of lime and gravel was ten inches in thickness, as if this part of the building had been required to sustain a greater degree of heat than the other—a supposition extremely probable, from the circumstance that the pillars below bore evident marks of having been much injured by fire. A quantity of charcoal was found beside them, in good preservation, as if placed there to renew the glow of a furnace which had been suddenly and for ever extinguished. Under the first apartment the heat had been conducted by means of flues formed of clay, which were found quite perfect when the discovery was made; the partition-wall between the two rooms was pierced near the ground by a hole three inches in diameter, through which a pipe of some description had no doubt led as a conduit for water from the one to the other.

“Such were the most perfect of the ruins brought to light at the period referred to; but all around them were to be seen the remains of other chambers which had evidently been of a similar construction. Taken in the aggregate, they unquestionably marked the position of an establishment of no mean importance in its day—the public baths of the Roman Inveresk. Of their high antiquity there can be no doubt; for every particular mentioned proclaims them Roman—the very cement covering the floors was of a quality unequalled by the skill of later times, and was formed of exactly the same materials as the tarras which lined the capacious sewers of the ‘Eternal City.’”

Still it is open to doubt if such remains indicate the poor northern substitute for the gorgeous thermæ of the south. Mr Bruce, in his scholarlike and interesting book on the Roman Wall—of which we would fain take an opportunity of speaking more at length ere we resign the subject of the Romans in Scotland, with which it is intimately connected—in mentioning one of these oven sub-floors or hypocausts, suggests that, instead of being intended to heat water or produce a sudatory, they were merely an ingenious method of creating a comfortable degree of indoor warmth for the southern inhabitants of our stormy region. “At present,” he says, speaking of the remains near Chesters, “the floor of the principal apartment is nine inches thick, and when its upper surface was overlaid with a tasteful concrete or mosaic pavement, it would be an inch or two more. It would require a very powerful furnace to raise this mass of matter to a considerable temperature. On the other hand, if the production of a genial and uniform warmth were the object in view, no contrivance could be more suitable. The heated air from a small furnace permeating the underground flues and the walls of a suit of apartments, and not passing off until in its lengthened passage it had given out the larger part of the warmth it had derived, would, in the lapse of some hours, give to the whole building a comfortable temperature which it would not readily lose. Any inattention to the furnace, either by causing it to burn too fiercely or too feebly, would not be felt. The thickness of the floors would prevent the air from being scorched, and producing the disagreeable sensation which is experienced in rooms that are heated by the stoves in common use. It is not improbable that we may return to this method of warming our churches and public halls, even if we do not adopt it in our private buildings.”

Here we have got at something very practical indeed. But, in fact, the Romans knew a vast deal about the art of sustaining life and making it endurable; how otherwise could they have organised so vast a population within the walls of the imperial city? When the Board of Health were recommending tubular drainage, they received specimens of glazed pipes constructed on the best modern principles, which had been excavated from the Coliseum. Curious tubes have been found both in the English and the Scottish walls, and the tradition of the country people in the neighbourhood of both has singularly coincided in assigning them as part of a tubular system of communication from end to end of the wall. The Romans were able sanitarians, and knew the art of safely, and, without inconvenience or risk to discipline, condensing a large number of men within a narrow space. The camp, under the Polybian system of castrametation, was crowded beyond anything that a deputy-quartermaster could readily believe, and there was still greater condensation under the Hygenian system—which, by the way, has no connection whatever with the Hygeian system of the quack doctors who call themselves the British College of Health.

This slight digression from the domestic circle to the camp seems to invite the question, if there are not nobler objects of association with the mighty Roman name than warm baths, heated parlours, and soil-pipes? Was it for this that the eagle, seeking universal dominion, was borne northwards through fields of slaughtered barbarians into realms beyond the line which those who entered them had been taught by their parents to believe as the utmost limits of the earth? Is there nothing in the relics of almighty Rome to tell of her conquests and victories—her mingled impetuosity and endurance—her lofty scorn of the barbarian—her proud defiance of man, of the elements, and of fate itself? Yes. Her military works are indeed still the great leading memorials of Rome, and warlike relics are her principal vestiges. Standing within the ramparts of the fortified camp at Ardoch Bridge, we are conscious in the permanent stability of the earthen works—many of them still smooth and clean as the glacis of a modern fortress—how daring and aggressive, yet how systematic and careful, was the Roman invasion of the North. It is the boast of the antiquary—or the archæologist, as he now calls himself—that he is no longer the fusty custodier of

“A fouth o’ auld nick-nackets,

Rusty airn caps and jinglin jackets,

Waud haud the Lothians three in tackets,

A towmont guid;

And parritch-pats, and auld saut backets,

Before the flood.”

He is now the scientific analyser of the wrecks which time has left, erecting out of his researches, by rigid induction, so much of the history of the past as his materials will afford. And for this there is still a wide field—a wide blank field, but a small portion of which we can ever hope to see filled up—in the three centuries of struggle between the Romans and the inhabitants of Scotland. The beginning of the contest is illuminated by the brilliant light of Tacitus; but after this all is dark and indistinct. We know that nearly a century later Lollius Urbicus penetrated far to the north—that he probably reached those Aræ Finium which we have already spoken of in Moray and Inverness, possibly built that dubious stone chamber in Burgh-head, and bathed in it. About his journeys and conquests—about the building of the Scottish Wall and its forts—their repeated relinquishment and recapture, and the final expulsion of the invaders, still deemed so after the lapse of centuries, how much must there be which the spirit of historical inquiry would devour with avidity—how little that can actually be submitted to its intellectual appetite.

Nay, of the very beginning of the narrative as set forth by Tacitus, how little do we actually know. The bright light dazzles us, and we think it reveals everything, but on examination we can make out but little with clearness. What are we to believe about the battle of the Grampians and Galgacus? Who reported that fine speech of his, containing so many capital hits at the condition of the court of Domitian and the policy of the Prætorian guards? Is it not odd that the Romans, who do not condescend to afford us the slightest hint of the character or structure of the language of their Celtic and Gothic contemporaries, should have got hold of an entire speech of the kind, and translated it so well? That the Romans found it the hardest of all their conflicts to establish themselves in Scotland is clear enough; but it is beyond a doubt that the number and organisation of their adversaries were exaggerated by the historian, to enhance the merit of his brother-in-law and fellow Romans. How are we to believe that thirty thousand trained warriors were gathered under the command of one leader, with such means of subsistence as Scotland can have then afforded? We know that the islands of New Zealand, having an area co-extensive with the United Kingdom, could just produce about that number of men able to bear arms, were every one, in all the remotest corners of the islands, brought to join the general muster; and it is difficult to suppose that Scotland was much more populous than a track of New Zealand similar in extent would be now. How much more interesting than the grandiloquent Roman’s account of the chariot charge, and the showers of darts, would have been some actual account of the character and appearance of the mountain warriors who braved the power of Rome; but we derive no more distinct impression of them than that their swords were very long. It would be something to know even the name of the chief called Galgacus, and an accurate sketch of his appearance would be worth a picture-gallery. Modern art has by no means supplied the defect. We have before us a representation of “Galgacus addressing the Caledonian army before the battle of the Grampians,” which, we are informed, is engraved in steel, in the finest style of the art. The chief has unexceptionable mustaches, and is arrayed in the full uniform of some one of the Highland regiments. His ostrich plume is very rich and full, and he addresses the meeting in the attitude which may be found in the frontispiece of “the Speaker’s Guide.” His chariot—but for the material, which is basket-work—might have come out of Longacre. We cannot say much for the anatomy of the horses, but their grooming is excellent, and they are admirably matched. At their head stands a figure arrayed in tartan, whose shape and attitude would seem much more natural were he accoutred in cords and tops, with a green frock and shoulder-knots. Another attempt, evidently more ambitious in the adaptation of costume and coincidents, is not much more successful. The scene is laid on the slope of Arthur Seat as a suitable piece of mountain scenery. Galgacus is more rough and hairy than in the other attempt. There is a greater portion of bare limb and a smaller amount of tartan. He wears on his head a skull-cap with a spike in it, such as dragoons wore in the seventeenth century. In his hand he carries a Lochaber-axe, such as that which made the City Guard of Edinburgh so formidable in the days of poor Ferguson. The chariot is not so well got up as in the rival plate; we question if it would go a couple of yards on a turnpike road, not to speak of its capacity to bowl along the scaurs and precipices of the Grampians. A scythe projects from either axle in a way which makes one wonder how the group around can pay so much attention to the oratory. If the machine move a few inches, the leg of a venerable gentleman very intent on the oration will be amputated. As to this personage,—his head, with its high brow, aquiline nose, and profuse white beard, is taken from some apostle in some painting by some great master. The costume is of the peculiar kind invented by Benjamin West. The old man carries in his hand an instrument like an Irish reaping-hook; only it is made of gold, and he is going to cut the misletoe with it. He is the type of those mysterious personages called Druids in the histories perused by our youth at school, and his function in modern phraseology is that of army chaplain. From neither of these representations do we derive a very satisfactory notion of Galgacus and his followers; and, indeed, it would be difficult to say which of them seems the more distant from the probable truth.

Another question is in itself of a far more simple character, yet has caused a sufficient amount of complex dispute—Where was this battle of the Grampians fought? The Grampian mountains are well enough known in modern geography. The Mons Grampius of Tacitus is as great a geographical vagrant as the source of the Niger or the place where Hannibal passed the Alps. The etymologists find that the word Grampian is decidedly of Gaelic origin; but etymologists, and Celtic ones especially, can always find what is wanted. Our own belief is that the name of the Grampian mountains is derived from the words Mons Grampius of Tacitus, and we have no doubt that he gave that name to the battle-field with true Roman caprice and contempt. Where then was it? When Tacitus speaks of the army having passed the Bodotria, and the natives being driven, as it were, into another island before the battle, we seem to have the fact pretty clearly ascertained that it occurred north of the Forth and Clyde, and of the line of forts subsequently erected. But over the extensive ground thus opened to them antiquaries have moved about the battle like a chessman over every available square, from Lochore in Fifeshire, where Scott rather encouraged them to place it on account of his son’s marriage with the heiress, to the hills of Aberdeenshire. A hard fight was made at Ardoch, with its fine fort and camps, in full view of the Grampian range, if not on them; but the champions of the other spots would not admit themselves to be defeated. In the midst of such a contest, in which such men as Sibbald, Horsley, Gordon, Stukeley, Whitaker, Chalmers, Pinkerton, Roy, and Ritson were engaged so unsuccessfully, it is pleasant to see a real giant come forth and hew the pigmies down with an unhesitating sword. Some thirty years ago there appeared an “Account of interesting Roman Antiquities discovered in Fife,” by the Rev. Andrew Small of Edenshead. In a chapter, giving “an account of the battle of Meralsford on the Lomond hill, which Tacitus has mistaken for Mount Grampius,” he affords a model to the class of antiquaries who have generally dealt with these subjects, since he carries to the highest perfection their peculiar method of reasoning. His view is, that Tacitus had made a topographical blunder, since a battle which Mr Small knows to have taken place at Meralsford, “appears obviously to have been that great battle described by Tacitus as having been fought at the foot of Mons Grampius. But it is clear to a demonstration, that he had mistaken Mons Lomundus for Mons Grampius, as it is nigh the north brae of the West Lomond Hill that the battle was fought.” Such reasoning is conclusive. His method of describing the whole affair is equally clear and convincing. We have the operations of the Romans step by step thus:—“At Burnside they were within less than a quarter of a mile of the Caledonians, having only to cross in a north-east direction the south-east angle of the farm of Bonnety when they entered upon the lands of Edenshead, and there they came first in contact with the Caledonians, where a large cairn, erected upon the march betwixt these two lands, straight east from the farm-steading of Bonnety, which stood about these twenty years back, evidently points out the extremity to where the left wing had extended.” Here it seems the Romans at the commencement of the affair were repulsed, an event which Tacitus naturally passes over; and the exulting Mr Small, who is a truly national writer, talks of “the warm reception they met with, and the sound drubbing they got from the brave Caledonians when the battle commenced;” while he further finds that the unfaithful Tacitus “carefully conceals their retreat across the river Eden, because he considers it disgraceful to the Roman arms.”

It is a pity that people will not be satisfied with such comprehensive solutions of difficulties, but it must be admitted that the battle of the Grampians is still in want of a site. A curious element of perplexity was added to the dispute, by the introduction in the midst of it, about a century ago, of the itinerary of Richard, the monk of Cirencester, who had left behind him a manuscript giving a full and minute account of the geography of Britain in the time of the Romans, taken from Roman sources. His itinerary went as far north as the Moray Firth, and wherever he set down a station, there some remains or some identity of name immediately proved the accuracy of his materials. Never was such joy in the antiquarian world. The writers on Roman British archæology, who followed the discovery, alluded to their groping predecessors as astronomers might to those who wrote in ignorance of the Copernican theory. The magnificent work of General Roy on the military antiquities of the Romans, was but a commentary on the itinerary of Richard. Whitaker treated it as an undoubted authority for the state of Britain in the middle of the second century, “a period when we have scarce any information concerning the island from the Roman historians, and the Roman Empire among us was in its greatest glory and its farthest extent.” Even Gibbon gave the work entire credit.

Yet there were some anachronisms or anatopisms, if we may coin a word, which cast suspicion on the performance; and among these, after having taken the inquirer by the ninth Iter beyond the boundaries of Aberdeenshire and the wild uplands near the source of the Don, here all at once he found himself at the “Mons Grampius.” No ingenuity could reconcile this with the account of Tacitus, and the antiquaries had to resort to the bold operation of believing that this did not profess to be the site of the battle, but was a station named in honour of it, as we now say Waterloo Bridge, and Trafalgar Square. But there was something very suspicious in the unwonted circumstance of a monk of the fourteenth century having occupied himself with Roman topography; and the suspicion is not removed by a preliminary dialogue, in which Richard argues the matter with his abbot, who tells him that man has but a short time to live in this world, and it is a sad thing to see a rational creature occupying so brief an interval in setting down a useless list of places which have ceased to exist, and were in their best days only the abode of benighted heathens.

There is, indeed, some reason to believe that the itinerary of Richard is a hoax; but if it be, it is a very complicated and elaborate one. The existence of the MS. was first notified to Stukeley the antiquary, who received an account of it as a discovery made in Copenhagen by Mr Charles Julius Bertram, who enclosed a specimen of it. This so excited the interest of the antiquary that he insisted on having a copy of the whole. Mr Charles Julius Bertram held the responsible place of English Professor in the Royal Marine Academy, and if it be the case that, having tried by the specimen and description to “take a rise,” as it is termed, out of the solemn antiquary, and finding that he must support the story or find himself in a position which it would be unpleasant for an instructor of youth to occupy, that of a perpetrator of practical jokes—it must be admitted that he bore the task he had brought on himself bravely, and relieved himself from his predicament very successfully. We see that a translation of Richard of Cirencester has been published by Mr Bohn in his six old English chronicles. We would like well to see a critical inquiry into its authenticity, conducted with the light of modern archæological science. To the subject, as well as to the wider field of the Roman vestiges in Scotland, we must in the mean time bid farewell.

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