vicinity of this town a Roman legion was stationed for the protection of the colony. The precise spot which was occupied by the camps of this legion is indicated by the remains of extensive Roman earthworks at Lexdon, a name which is a corruption of Legionis Dunum. The process by which the modern name of Caerleon has been evolved is indicated in the work which bears the name of Nennius.1

The word port, "a haven, a harbor," which we find in Newport, Portsmouth, Portesham, and the like, might leave some doubt as to its Latin origin; but as Portsmouth was called Portus Magnus by the Romans, and as the form port also appears in Porchester or Portchester, as it was formerly written, in which it evidently refers to the name of the place where the castrum was located, we may safely derive the root port in all such names from the Latin portus, "a harbor."

So the English word "wall," which has a Teutonic appearance, is nevertheless derived from the Latin val lum, "a rampart," naturalized among the Britons, and still existing in Welsh in the form gwal, with the same meaning. The wall of Hadrian ran from Newcastle to Carlisle, and, as we have said elsewhere, is still in wonderful preservation. But even if this wall had perished, it would be easy to trace its direction by means of the continuous series of memorial names which are furnished by the villages and farm-houses along its course. It began at Wallsend, now famous as the place where the best Newcastle coals are shipped. We then come to Benwell, Heddon-on-the-Wall, Welton, Wallshiels, Walltown, Thirlwall, Oldwall, Wallby, with Wallend and Wallhead at the western end. If to all these forms of strat, streat, street, chester, cester, caster, caer, car, coln, port, wall, which are not of very frequent occurrence, we add the word "mile," which is derived from the Latin mille passus or mille passuum, “a thousand paces," the Roman measure of distance, we have about all that remains of five hundred years of Roman rule on the map of England.

In some parts of this work we have had occasion to speak of Runes and of Ogham inscriptions; it may here be convenient to explain in detail the nature of this kind of writing.

1 Bellum gestum est in urbe Leogis, quæ Brittanice Cair Lion dicitur.Nennius, c. 56. See page 45.

At the time when the Roman alphabet was introduced by the Christian missionaries into England, some of the Teutonic nations had been for several centuries in possession of a peculiar alphabet of their own. This ancient alphabet was chiefly used by the Scandinavians, the Northumbrians, and the Goths. The characters are called Runes, and the alphabet bears the name of Futhore, from the first six runes,

P, N, P, ‡, R, Y, f, u, th, o, r, c.

The one unsolved problem in the history of the alphabet is the origin of these runes. That they should have been independently invented by the Teutons is a solution which must be regarded as quite out of the question. The history of the invention of alphabetic writing shows the enormous difficulty of such an undertaking. It was only through the slow developments of many centuries that the united genius of the Phoenicians and the Greeks, the two most cultured races of the South, succeeded at last in elaborating a pure alphabet out of the cumbrous picture writing of the Egyptian Hieroglyphics. That an equivalent result should have been attained off-hand by any semi-barbarous Teutonic tribe is quite incredible. There are, moreover, such striking resemblances between several of the runes and the corresponding letters of various Mediterranean alphabets, that the mathematical chances against such a series of accidental coincidences are absolutely overwhelming. On these grounds it has been universally admitted that the runes must, in some unknown manner, have been derived from that one great parent alphabet to which modern research has affiliated almost every other alphabet of the world.

Runic inscriptions have been found scattered over a vast region, extending from the Danube to the Orkneys. The most ancient of these inscriptions are earlier in date by at least a thousand years than the most modern. During this long period a constant development was going on, and hence we find that the runes of different countries and of different periods present very considerable variations. They may all, however, be classified into three main divisions-the Gothic, the Anglian, and the Scandinavian. The characteristic runes of these three classes are shown in the following table:

In this table the first column, which is styled the Gothic Futhore, contains the twenty-four primitive runes, which are used indifferently in all countries in the earliest inscriptions.

The second column contains the corresponding runes

of the Anglian Futhorc, which is used on the Ruthwell Cross and on several Northumbrian monuments of the seventh and following centuries. It is given as a futhorc in sundry manuscripts of the eighth and ninth centuries, the earliest form appearing on a sword of the sixth or seventh century, which was found in the Thames, near London.

In the third column is given the latest, or Scandinavian Futhorc. It attained its final form about the tenth century, and contains only sixteen runes. We find it given as a futhorc on a slab in the Picts' House at Maeshowe in Orkney, and on a twelfth century font at Bærse in Denmark. This Scandinavian futhorc was used in Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Orkney, Cumberland, and the Isle of Man. On the entrance to the arsenal at Venice may be seen one of the sculptured lions which once adorned the Piræus at Athens. The marble is deeply scored with Norse runes, which by the aid of photography have been deciphered, and prove to be a record of the capture of the Piræus by Harold Hardráda, the Norwegian king, who afterward figures in English history, and fell at Stamford Bridge.

The fourth column contains the Maso-Gothic Alphabet, which was compiled in the fourth century by Uĺphilas, Bishop of the Goths. It is evidently based upon the ancient Gothic futhorc, with two or three additions and several modifications derived from the contemporary Byzantine alphabet.

The Scandinavian settlers in Northumbria, Cumbria, and the Isle of Man, having left behind them so many runic records of their presence, it may seem strange that not a single runic stone should have been discovered in the Scandinavian colony of Pembroke, or even in Ireland, where Scandinavian chieftains bore sway for many years in the cities of Dublin, Waterford, and Limerick. But the fact of this remarkable absence of runic monuments, in certain regions where they might have been looked for, must be taken in conjunction with another circumstance, equally remarkable, that it is exactly in those regions where the expected runic stones are wanting that Ogham writing abounds. This will be explained by the fact that the mysterious ogham character, in which the most ancient records of Wales and Ireland are written, and respecting which so many wild conjectures have been made, was originally nothing more nor less than a

very simple and obvious adaptation of the futhorc to xylographic necessities, the individual runes being expressed by a convenient notation consisting of notches cut with a knife on the edge of a squared staff, instead of being cut with a chisel on the surface of a stone.1 The geographical distribution of the ogham inscriptions, moreover, raises a strong presumption in favor of the Scandinavian origin of the ogham writing; for it may safely be affirmed that where the Northmen never came ogham inscriptions are never found.

The ogham characters in their primitive form probably consist of a system of notches on the edge of a squared stick or stone. They were afterward written on a plane surface, on either side of a central line. The name given to this line, druim, shows that it represented the "ridge" of the primitive squared staff.

The arrangement of the oghams, according to the mediæval Irish tradition, was in four "groups," aicme, each group comprising five ogham characters. Thus we have-

The ogham inscriptions now remaining in England and in such parts of Wales and Ireland as were once occupied by the Northmen date mostly from the fifth and sixth centuries. They have been interpreted by the help of bilingual specimens in Wales, where they were often supplemented by a Latin version, or intermixed with Latin words."

1 Some such method of notation seems to be implied by the words book and buch-staben (beech sticks), and may probably be referred to in the often quoted lines of Venantius Fortunatus, a sixth century poet, who says:

Barbara fraxineis pingatur rhuna tabellis,

Quodque papyrus agit, virgula plana valet.

For more ample details on the subject see Isaac Taylor, Greeks and Goths; a Study on the Runes; Brash, Ogham Inscribed Monuments; and an Essay on the Ogham and Scythian Letters, by Dr. Graves.