a Finnish people of the Bronze Age. But whichever view we adopt, and however distant antecedently to the Christian era the Celtic invasion may be placed, it is an obvious reflection that these fierce and masterful Celts, who could force their way through Europe from their far-away home in the heart of Asia, cross the seas to Britain, and subdue its inhabitants, almost to obliteration, must even then have been a people vastly superior in civilisation, and the resources of civilisation, to the ignominious and degraded savages above described. The fact alone that it took Agricola six years, and as many successive campaigns, to reduce the tribes between the Cheviots and the Grampians to a state of but partial and intermittent subjection, is sufficient to indicate the hardy and heroic nature of the race who then inhabited what is now called the Lowlands of Scotland. Something higher than stone weapons,' and the culture of 'savages pure and simple,' was required to beat back, time and again, army after army of the first soldiers in the world. The Romans themselves constantly acknowledge the bravery and warlike conduct of these natives of Northern Britain.*

The root-stock of a people who have occupied so prominent a place in our national life as the Borderers have always done, must have been a strong one: so strong, that not all the subsequent admixture of Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian blood was sufficient to dilute its essential qualities of energy and courage. From the one of these intrusive elements, the Angles, the Borderers received their language, and from the Scandinavians, perhaps, their highly poetical temperament; but their character for hardihood and courage is traceable to a much older derivation. In the first century their ancestors formed part of the great nation of the Brigantes, reputed by Tacitus to have been the most populous state in the whole province.' The Romans and they were long at war, and it was not till the summer of A.D. 79 or 80 that Agricola

*That Mr. Craig-Brown should have so mistaken the character of the early Celtic tribes is rendered the more surprising when we find him making (vol. i. p. 56) a quotation from Mr. Grant Allen's 'Anglo'Saxon Britain,' in the first page of which book we are told that the Celts, even before they wandered from their Aryan home, were a people long past the state of aboriginal savagery, and possessed of a con'siderable degree of primitive culture; and that, though mainly 'pastoral in habit, they were acquainted with tillage, and grew for 'themselves at least one kind of grain.' Professor Rhys further tells us that the art of making cloth of some sort was known even to the 'earliest of the Celts who ever landed here.'

succeeded in gaining a footing in that part of their country north of the Solway. In order to reclaim the natives from the rude and unsettled state which prompted them to war, Agricola spent the first winter and succeeding seasons in teaching them to build temples, courts of justice, and dwelling-houses, doubtless of stone. 'He was also attentive,' says Tacitus, to provide a liberal education for the sons of ⚫ their chieftains, preferring the natural genius of the Britons to the attainments of the Gauls.' And so rapidly did they acquire the Roman language and Roman manners that the historian goes on to deplore the state of effeminate luxury into which they shortly fell. A moment's reflection is sufficient to show that men who could so quickly absorb the Roman culture could not have been, but a year or two previous, living like wild animals, in holes dug in the ground.' They were splendid barbarians, not debased

savages.

As a relief from the thankless task of proving what these British tribes were by what they were not, let us take a passage on the early settlers in the district from the second book on our list, A Short Border History,' by Mr. Groome. This little book, it may be said in passing, is an admirable compendium of Border history, written in a popular style, yet showing everywhere marks of good scholarship, extensive reading, and exact knowledge, with many passages of refined literary beauty. Referring to the fact that all the people in the Scottish Border speak English, with the exception of a few new-comers, who speak Gaelic or Welsh, and whose language to the Borderers of to-day is an unknown tongue, Mr. Groome points out the relation of these three languages to one another, and adds :

'We know now that ages and ages ago, long before Christ was born, the ancestors, not only of English, Welsh, Irish, and Highlanders, but of Romans, Greeks, Germans, and Russians, of Persians and Hindoos, dwelt all together somewhere in Central Asia. They formed a one people, the Aryan; and they spoke a common language, the motherspeech of Latin, Greek, English, etc., as Latin itself is the mother of French and Italian. Then they broke up, and wandered most of them westward, following, perhaps, the course of the sun in the heavens. The first to reach Britain were the Celts, and the first of the Celts were the Gaels, who were followed by the Cymri, or Welsh, and by them driven onwards to Ireland, Galloway, and the Scottish Highlands. Englishmen there were none, as neither was there a Border, then or for fully a thousand years after the dawn of history. If to-day in New York one meets a Red Indian, one feels sure that he is not a native of the city, though his forefathers once may have camped on the

site of Broadway; may have given Manhattan Island its Indian name. Just so the Welshman or Highlander is now an alien in our Border country, where his ancestors built the hill-forts, and lie buried in barrows or cairns, and where they have left Celtic names to many rivers and mountains, to a few towns, hamlets, and parishes.' (Pp. 10, 11.)

In resuming consideration of Mr. Craig-Brown's volumes, it is not necessary to follow him through his sketch of the Roman occupation; but it may be pointed out that Selkirkshire did not form part of the province of Mæatia (p. 32), since the country of the Mæatæ lay to the north of the wall between the Forth and Clyde. Neither was it the forest of Selkirk which Severus, in A.D. 208, cut down and laid roads through, but the forests of Perthshire and Kincardineshire, when he subdued the revolt of the Mæatæ. We observe, at p. 63, an argument based on the same mistake. Again, the Roman station of Trimontium was not at Newstead in Roxburghshire; nor has the name anything to do with the 'triple Eildons.' This is one of the spurious Richard of Cirencester's fables, and has been frequently repeated. The Trimontium of the Romans was in the district of the Selgovæ, on the Solway Frith, now Dumfriesshire, and has been identified since the time of Chalmers with the broad tabular hill of Birrenswark in that county, on which the remains of a great Roman camp are still to be seen. Dr. Skene has pointed out that the syllable tri represents the Welsh tre or tref, a home or town; and that Trimontium is simply the Latinised form of Trefmynydd, the Town on the Mountain. The Romans had evidently taken possession at this place of a native fort.

Into the prehistoric antiquities of Selkirkshire we need not enter. It possesses a considerable number of British forts, some of them of large dimensions. Up the valley of the Yarrow, and by the Gala and the Tweed, funeral cairns of the pre-Christian type have been found, with their shortened cists, occasionally containing clay urns probably of the Bronze Age. But its chief antiquity is one of a later age, namely, the Catrail, a fosse or trench, with a rampart of earth on either side, which runs from above Galashiels, irregularly southwards to Peel Fell, in the Cheviots, overlooking the Borders of England, a distance of nearly fifty miles. Readers of Scott's early letters to George Ellis will remember his frequent references to the ancient rampart--venerable relic of Reged wide and fair Strathclyde.' It is known also as the Picts-work-ditch, and is once named in a deed of the fourteenth century as the fosse of the Gal

wegians.' Many portions of it still exist, and its route can be traced with considerable accuracy almost throughout its entire length. Mr. Craig-Brown has shown its route upon

map of the county prefixed to his first volume; and in the text has given a most careful and minute description of that route, and of the surface of country over which it passes, drawn partly from his own observation, and partly from an excellent paper on the subject contributed in 1880 by Mr. James Smail, F.S.A. Scot., to the Proceedings of the Berwickshire Naturalists' Club. Mr. Craig-Brown rightly observes that this fosse or trench presents a problem in archæology that has continued to exercise the wit and 'ingenuity of investigators since its first description by Gordon in 1726;' and he has embodied in his pages an interesting record of the various opinions that have been expressed regarding it. The chief problem of the Catrail turns upon the questions as to who were its original constructors, and for what purpose it was constructed. Gordon, in his Itinerary,' suggests that it may have been a boundary formed in the time of Caracalla between the territory of the Picts and the Roman provinces. Maitland, on the other hand, took it for a Roman road. Whitaker was of opinion that it belonged to the fifth century, and was a line of division between the Britons of Cumbria on the west and the Saxons on the east; in which opinion Chalmers and Sir Walter Scott may be said to have concurred. Professor Veitch, in his 'Border History,' describes the rampart as 'fixing the boundary to the west of the Angle kingdom of 'Northumberland;' and he further thinks the traditional name of Picts-work-ditch points to the Picts as the framers of the rampart, though this,' he adds, is by no means 'decisive.' Mr. Craig-Brown is of opinion that it was neither a defence nor a boundary-was not a primary work at all; but simply a convenient line of communication, or strategic road, between the greater forts.

We could have wished Mr. Craig-Brown had stopped here; but he waxes impatient with Professor Veitch's reference to the Picts: A word upon the Pictish theory. It is untenable. 6 There is no evidence whatever that the tribe known to 'ancient historians as Picts ever reached the English border.' (Vol. i. p. 46.) Yet when we turn back over Mr. CraigBrown's own pages to p. 32, we find him there stating, what is quite true, that when troubles began to overtake the Roman Empire, the Roman provinces in Britain became a prey to Scots and Picts from the north and west, who,

site of Broadway; may have given Manhattan Island its Indian name. Just so the Welshman or Highlander is now an alien in our Border country, where his ancestors built the hill-forts, and lie buried in barrows or cairns, and where they have left Celtic names to many rivers and mountains, to a few towns, hamlets, and parishes.' (Pp. 10, 11.)

In resuming consideration of Mr. Craig-Brown's volumes, it is not necessary to follow him through his sketch of the Roman occupation; but it may be pointed out that Selkirkshire did not form part of the province of Mæatia (p. 32), since the country of the Mæata lay to the north of the wall between the Forth and Clyde. Neither was it the forest of Selkirk which Severus, in A.D. 208, cut down and laid roads through, but the forests of Perthshire and Kincardineshire, when he subdued the revolt of the Mæatæ. We observe, at p. 63, an argument based on the same mistake. Again, the Roman station of Trimontium was not at Newstead in Roxburghshire; nor has the name anything to do with the triple Eildons.' This is one of the spurious Richard of Cirencester's fables, and has been frequently repeated. The Trimontium of the Romans was in the district of the Selgovæ, on the Solway Frith, now Dumfriesshire, and has been identified since the time of Chalmers with the broad tabular hill of Birrenswark in that county, on which the remains of a great Roman camp are still to be seen. Dr. Skene has pointed out that the syllable tri represents the Welsh tre or tref, a home or town; and that Trimontium is simply the Latinised form of Trefmynydd, the Town on the Mountain. The Romans had evidently taken possession at this place of a native fort.

Into the prehistoric antiquities of Selkirkshire we need not enter. It possesses a considerable number of British forts, some of them of large dimensions. Up the valley of the Yarrow, and by the Gala and the Tweed, funeral cairns of the pre-Christian type have been found, with their shortened cists, occasionally containing clay urns probably of the Bronze Age. But its chief antiquity is one of a later age, namely, the Catrail, a fosse or trench, with a rampart of earth on either side, which runs from above Galashiels, irregularly southwards to Peel Fell, in the Cheviots, overlooking the Borders of England, a distance of nearly fifty miles. Readers of Scott's early letters to George Ellis will remember his frequent references to the ancient rampart--venerable relic of Reged wide and fair Strathclyde.' It is known also as the Picts-work-ditch, and is once named in a deed of the fourteenth century as the fosse of the Gal