purchased a truce for several years with money. Nor did this secure to him perpetual tranquillity; for the northern nations made a new attack upon the frontier, with a vigour, which he found himself unable to withstand, till he had received a reinforcement. He was, therefore, obliged to retire as they advanced. This so incensed Severus, that he resolved upon the entire extirpation of the Caledonians, which yet he was unable to effect; for all his formidable preparations and tedious. marches through Caledonia, in which he is said to have lost fifty thousand men, terminated in a peace with that people.* After which, finding it so troublesome to defend the boundary of Antoninus, he fixed the limits of the empire by a strong frontier in the north of England.† From that time, all that part of Britain now called Scotland seems to have been abandoned by the Romans, until the reign of Valentinian, when the Caledonians, who then began to be distin

* Dio, lib. 78.

(THE learned Author of "Caledonia" is of opinion that Severus fortified the island from the Solway to the Tyne before invading the North. Vol. I. p. 186. Editor.)

guished in history by the new name of Scots, Picts, and Attacots, making a dreadful irruption into the Roman province, Theodosius, a commander of great reputation, was sent against them, who drove them beyond the friths of Forth and Clyde; and, repairing the forts upon the wall of Antoninus, made it anew the boundary of the empire: the tract of country, which by this means was recovered, was erected into a fifth British province, and called Valentia. Not long after this, the Roman forces were recalled from Britain, and all the extremities of the empire, to defend its centre, at length attacked by the Goths, and other northern nations. This put a final period to the Roman dominion in Britain, where it had subsisted, though not without various revolutions, and frequent disturbances, and sometimes in a low condition, at other times in a high degree of splendor, in the southern parts, since the invasion of Julius Cæsar, a period of five hundred years; and, in the northern parts, since the time of Agricola, about three hundred and thirty years.

UNLESS we had, as it were by habit, contracted a prepossession in favour of every

thing upon which we see the name of so great and renowned a people as the Romans, who so long ruled the earth with much glory and many virtues, but perhaps with greater crimes; who framed the most wise and salutary laws for the administration of private justice, and to whom every scholar is indebted for the first rudiments of classical literature; we could not have thought it worth while to take so serious an account of those ruins; for, though many monuments which that people have left behind them in other parts of the earth are justly reckoned grand and magnificent, all that remains in Scotland can lay small claim to these epithets.

THE wall of Antoninus is now entirely demolished in many places, and the ground ploughed where it stood; and, as the canal, which generally runs parallel to it, will no doubt tend to the improvement of the adjacent fields, it is probable, that, twenty years hence, few remains of it shall be visible: the grounds still occupied by it will be more usefully employed; and, instead of those memorials of ambition and war, succeeding generations will behold green fields and plentiful

harvests, the produce of peace and industry. The large town of Falkirk, the villages of Merchistown and Polmont, with their gardens, are situated upon the ruins of it; as also, the houses of Sea-begs, Glenfuir, and Bantaskine; and that of Callander stands within a few yards of it. The two great annual markets for black cattle, called the Trysts of Falkirk, which were formerly held in a common upon the south of that town, have, within these few years, been removed to the muir around Roughcastle, where tents are erected for the accommodation of the merchants along the very summit of the wall. There one may see the Caledonians trampling upon the ruins of Roman ambition, and unfettered commerce occupying the seat of imperious usurpation.*

(THE Trysts are now held on a spacious plain north-east from, and nearly adjoining to, Larbert. As our talk is of cattle, we may take notice, from Sir Robert Sibbald, of the prevalence anciently in this county of the wild white species, of which there are still a few in some parts of England, distinguished not only by their uniform colour, but methodical and determined style of attacking man. The mode of killing them latterly, with fire-arms, as it exhibited the only remain of the grandeur of ancient hunting, was attended with so many woful accidents, after a bull, by receiving twenty or thirty shots, had grown desperately infuriate, that it was left to the park

SECT. IV.

ANCIENT MONUMENTS UPON THE RIVER

CARRON.

THE river Carron takes its rise in a mountainous tract of ground near the middle of the isthmus between the friths of Forth and Clyde. Both the source, and the place where it emptieth itself into the sea, are within the shire of Stirling, which it divides into two nearly equal parts. The whole length of its course, which is from west to east, is not above fourteen miles; the first half of which is spent among bleak hills and rocks; but, when it hath reached the low grounds, its banks are cultivated and fruitful; and, as it advances, the neighbouring soil increases in richness and value, till, after passing through

keeper to kill them with a rifle-piece at one shot. The danger must have been extreme before the invention of gunpowder, in 1330. Sir Robert Sibbald has deemed it worth while to quote, from Boece, an anecdote of Robert Bruce and a White Bull, near Antonine's Wall. His Majesty had been nearly killed by the furious quadruped; but was saved by a gentleman, who, in honour of the hardy exploit, obtained the surname of "Turubull." Sibbald's Stirlingshire, p. 34. Editor.)