Chapter IV: Part 4

“The well-known naturalist, Dr Lenz, hunted in the year 1837 with Colani, and has communicated to us an authentic account of the last expedition of the prince of hunters; an account highly characteristic of the nature of the mountains, and of the hunters’ life in that wildest part of Switzerland. Accompanied by his friend, A. von Planta, Dr Lenz called upon Colani, and requested to be allowed to go out with him chamois-hunting, promising him two dollars for every day they were out, the same sum for every chamois he shot in their presence, and four dollars and the game for every one they themselves should shoot. The hunter accepted the offer. He was then a man of sixty-six, broad-shouldered, sturdy, deep-breasted, with rather a long face, a dark complexion, black hair, an aquiline nose, and brown, bold, wary eyes, whose expression betrayed his passionate character. He lived on bread, milk, and whey. Before or during the hunting-time he never drank wine. The meat of chamois and marmots was his favourite food. He spoke Italian, German, and French, and was skilled in the manufacture of sun-dials, surgical bandages, and fire-arms. He domineered over his neighbours with very little ceremony. They must let his two tame chamois feed in their gardens, and when a woman would not submit to this, and poisoned the animals—she very soon died, Colani was accustomed smilingly to relate.

“In vain had Dr Lenz and Planta been warned not to have anything to do with Colani. Their desire for sport was too strong, and the prospect of accompanying him too alluring. They started the next morning—a store of salt, and of smoked chamois and marmot meat, in the hunter’s game-bag. They had gone but a short way, when, in a deep ravine, closed in rear by the Reseggio glacier, they came upon five chamois, and the friends were about to open the campaign, when Colani said: ‘All very fine, but this is my salt-lick, where I allow no chamois to be shot.’ Then he desired to see ‘whether the gentlemen could shoot,’ and placed a stone, the size of a man’s fist, at a distance of a hundred and fifty paces, as a mark, which both hit.”

Despising the marmots that darted about amongst the rocks, the party continued their ascent of the vast icefield, occasionally catching sight of large and small herds of chamois, until, after an hour’s further march, they came upon a group of thirteen, grazing on a bit of turf hard by the rocks. But Colani again forbade them to fire, his object being rather to earn his handsome day’s wage than to destroy his game, so that the two friends had the pleasure of seeing forty beautiful chamois trot by in file—the young always behind the old ones—without being allowed to fire a shot. Without a single head of game, they betook themselves to a cowherd’s hut to pass the night. Amongst their provisions was a small wine-keg, the bung of which, driven hard in, they all in turn endeavoured to extract, with their fingers, and by the help of stones, &c. “I will get it out!” cried Colani; and griping the hard wooden stopper with his sixty-six-year-old teeth, turned the keg in his hands, and had uncorked it in an instant.

“The next morning the mountaineer took his companions to the Brüneberg, set one to watch, and led the other along a steep narrow crest of rock, whence they discerned several distant herds of chamois. Colani amused himself by taking Dr Lenz into several places of deadly peril. Once, when both lay looking over a cliff a thousand feet deep, endeavouring to spy out game, Lenz suddenly heard a violent rustling noise, and at the same moment a tremendous yell from Colani. Lenz drew himself back in a fright, and saw an enormous vulture sweeping, with the swiftness of an arrow, close over his head. Colani had observed the vulture’s premeditated attack, and by his shout had saved his companion from certain destruction. Before the hunters could use their guns, the bird had disappeared. Lenz thanked the mountaineer for his rescue, but at the same time observed to him, that he had not come into the mountains to be served up for breakfast to a nestful of young vultures, but to shoot chamois, whereupon Colani promised to take him, the next day, to the Bernina, where they abound.”

The next day was lost, however, in the fruitless pursuit of two bears, of which they could not get even a sight. The morning after, they were on foot at four o’clock, ascending a mountain. After breakfasting on milk and cheese in a shepherd’s hut, they separated, Planta remaining behind, Colani and Lenz pushing forward, through wind and snow showers, until the sun, rising above the mountains, gave promise of a fine day. Lenz got impatient, and told Colani that if he did not get a shot that day he would give up the chase. Colani replied that he would have taken them to the Bernina, but they had preferred coming to the Campogask mountains in quest of bears. There were few chamois where they then were, and those hard to get at, nevertheless he would take him to some, if he had courage to follow. In another half-hour he came in sight of the spot where he expected to find game, and saw five head. “There they are,” he cried; “at nine o’clock they will lie down; we may wait half an hour here;—but the road to yonder place is frightful. I have been over it only once in my life.”

“Colani went in front, his gun slung over his shoulder, came to a huge perpendicular wall of rock, and stepped upon a narrow ledge which ran along it. The path was hideously dangerous. The loose earth crumbled away at every step; in the incalculable depth below them the loftiest trees appeared no bigger than a man’s finger; in their front the shelf grew narrower, and seemed at last quite to disappear; they passed over several crevices, through which they looked down into the valley. With his face half-covered, Lenz followed Colani. On reaching the end of the line of precipice: ‘Have a care!’ cried the hunter, as he grasped, there where the path ceased, a rocky point, planted his foot firmly, and swung himself over the chasm to the farther side of the rock, leaving his companion to follow his example. With the courage of despair, Lenz did so, without accident, and almost to the astonishment of Colani, who remarked, with great _naïveté_, ‘I hardly thought we should have got as far as this together—but now to the chamois; we have circumvented them finely!’ In another half-hour they were on the top of the mountain on which they had seen the chamois, and at last they discerned a large and a small one lying amongst the Alpine roses at their feet, on the brink of a deep precipice. With a beating heart Lenz fired over Colani’s shoulder. The large chamois sprang to the height of a man from the ground, turned over, and fell backwards over the precipice. Colani, resting his gun on an unsteady block of stone, fired at the small one, and missed. Lenz was for going down into the ravine, to fetch his game, but Colani opposed this, and, with looks that told of a conscience ill at ease,—‘What lies in that grave,’ he said, ‘lies safely buried!’ Several years before, a Grison hunter had disappeared at that place, and no trace of him had ever been found. Lenz fancied a smell of human blood.”

Continuing their walk, or rather their scramble, the two men reached a dismal valley, strewn with blocks of stone, and surrounded by cloud-capped peaks. Suddenly Colani threw himself behind a stone, and made a sign to Lenz to do the same.

“‘What’s the matter?’ inquired Lenz, surprised.

“Colani answered not, but gazed hard through his field-glass, clenched his fist violently, and muttered an execration. At last Lenz discovered, high up amongst the rocks, a diminutive human figure. Colani, almost mad with fury, continued to grind out his ‘_Verdamms!_’ ‘I do not know the fellow,’ he at last exclaimed; ‘but, thank God, he has not seen us yet! Now he looks down through his glass.’ As he spoke, the hunter’s clenched teeth and savage glances justified apprehensions of the worst kind.

“‘As soon as yonder man moves off,’ he whispered, ‘we must circumvent him.’

“‘Nothing of the sort, Colani,’ said Lenz, gravely. ‘I came to shoot chamois, not men.’ Meanwhile the strange hunter disappeared. Colani sprang up. ‘Follow me,’ he cried: ‘in a quarter of an hour the man will be on yonder ridge; we must be there in ten minutes.’ They ran themselves out of breath, and in ten minutes got over a distance which, under ordinary circumstances, they would have taken half an hour to perform. On reaching the summit they sank, utterly exhausted, behind a mass of rock. But the strange hunter was near at hand. His approach revived them.

“Colani cocked his piece and took aim at the man. Quietly, but resolutely, Lenz seized the barrel, changed its direction, and said, in an authoritative tone,

“‘Stop; I will suffer no murder in my presence.’

“Colani cast a dangerous glance at him; but then he held out his hand and said, ‘We will not quarrel.’ Meanwhile the hunter had disappeared amongst the rocks. With a malicious laugh, Colani crept round, bidding Lenz remain where he was. The stranger had sat down rather lower, on the edge of a rock, and was gazing through his glass into the valley. ‘I do not know the fellow,’ said Colani; ‘but I will go down and pay him a visit. Hold yourself ready to fire.’

“‘I will have nothing to do with your quarrels,’ replied Lenz; ‘but I shoot down the first man who meddles with me.’

“With triggers cocked, Colani crept down like a cat. When only at three paces from the inoffensive stranger, he stepped suddenly from behind the rocks, and raised his fist against him. But he silently let it fall again. The pair gazed at each other for a moment; then Colani leant his gun against the rock, and sat down beside the hunter, took his gun from his hands and examined it, whilst they took snuff together. Lenz expected he would next ask for the game-bag, and then treacherously push the man over the precipice; but they remained friends.

“The strange hunter, a stout old man, about sixty-five years old, was a native of the village of Bevers, and a particular friend of Colani’s; but nevertheless, knowing how spiteful he was, he never risked himself on his hunting-ground. He had heard that Colani was gone to the Bernina, and seized the opportunity of shooting a chamois. But he had disguised himself, so that no one might betray him to Colani.”

Soon after this the hunting party was broken up, for it appeared to Lenz as if Colani would not have been much grieved to see him fall over a precipice, and as if he did all in his power to disgust him with his mountains and chamois. The next day Lenz left the Engadine with Planta; but for the next month he felt in every limb the consequences of his unusual fatigues. Colani fell ill in consequence of them, and died five days afterwards. This remarkable hunter had shot, since his twentieth year, at which period he usurped the sovereignty of the mountains, no less than two thousand seven hundred chamois (to say nothing of the many he had killed before attaining that age)—a number which no other hunter ever nearly approached.

The second part of Dr Tschudi’s book—which might rather be called a brief appendix, since it comprises but one-fifteenth part of the volume—is allotted to the domestic animals of the Alpine country—to cattle, goats and sheep, horses and dogs. It contains particulars interesting to the farmer as well as to the naturalist; but the length to which this paper has already extended forbids its further prolongation.

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.