PRESIDENT’S ADDRESS. 15 
youth among the Scots, he introduced from Hii or Iona, the 
island of St. Columba, the holy Aidan, whom he placed at Lin- 
disfarne, and who became the great promulgator of the Christian 
faith in Northumbria. 
After leaving St. Oswald’s the party wandered across Fallow- 
field Fell, whence was seen a most magnificent and varied 
prospect down and across the valley of the Tyne. The scene was 
most characteristic of our northern country, the river winding 
through rich alluvial tracts, teeming with agricultural wealth, 
its banks in many cases well wooded, rising abruptly from the 
plain, and broken here and there by a narrower outlet, through 
which came down from the uplands several tributaries of the 
Tyne, these uplands gradually rising into a higher and colder 
range of temperature, until extensive fir woods gave place in 
the distance to the broad sweep of ling and moorland. All 
these formed a scene of varied beauty, and viewed under the 
aspect of mingled sunshine and shadow, possessed a charm which 
few landscapes could surpass. We looked down on Dilston, 
the crumbling relic of the unfortunate Earl of Derwentwater, on 
Corbridge with its early church, and the almost obliterated 
traces of its Roman station, on Hexham with the grand remains 
of its ancient abbey, and two mediaval towers shewing above 
the roofs of the quaint old town; Ayden Castle might just be 
traced nestling among the trees, on the brink of the sweet dell 
on which it is placed ; whilst the ear was filled with the murmur 
of summer bees, and the soft sighing of the wind playing 
round the knolls, covered with heath and bracken, among which 
we stepped. We could picture the delight with which the 
citizen of ancient Rome gazed on the scene, then as beautiful as 
now, and which perhaps recalled to him some other view, and 
some sunnier plain in the distant land of his birth, whilst we 
looked on the time-worn stone on which he had engraved the 
record of visits so constant, that he identified the rock with 
himself. Petra Flavi Carantini, the rock of Flavius Carantinus, 
still remains to tell us that here, centuries ago, one of that 
mighty people, on whose civilization all modern states are based, 
and which has given a language to three of the great nations of 
