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for my own part — having all my life taken an interest in 

 these things — that I have never seen anything like it, nor 

 hardly anything which has thrown a large amount of illus- 

 tration upon it ; but in the course of last year, whilst reading 

 over Collingwood Bruce's " Roman Wall" — a book in which 

 there is a great variety of materials, considering it is limited 

 to one line of country, which is the northern Roman wall — I 

 found two or three facts which seem to throw an interesting 

 light upon your own peculiar piece of sculpture, which I will 

 now bring forward. It is, I suppose, generally known that 

 you have in the vestibule a large circular stone figure of the 

 face of the Sun ; this face of the Sun is surrounded with a 

 variety of designs, which have a mythological meaning, 

 and it is enveloped in a wreath of oak and laurel. You 

 have likewise other stones suflBcient to demonstrate that 

 there was a female figure supporting the circle on one side, 

 and a female figure on the other. Now, under the Emperors, 

 one of the most favourite representations was that of Victory, 

 which, like the figure before you (a drawing by Mr. Irvine), 

 was delineated as a winged female standing on a globe, 

 evidently meaning the world, holding a chaplet in the right 

 hand, and sometimes a palm in the left. This idea of the 

 figure of Victory is very old, as it was set forth in Hesiod, 

 700 years before the Christian era, so that the " Victoria" of 

 the Romans is really a borrowed Greek idea, and the most 

 famous of her monuments was imported from a Greek city. 

 The statue of Victory which stood in the Senate House at 

 Rome was actually brought from Magna Graecia — from the 

 Greek colonies in the South of Italy. Following out the idea 

 conveyed by the drawing, you will observe that the figure is 

 carrying a wreath in her right hand, ready to place it on the 

 head of the victor. It is not at all an uncommon thing for 

 that figure to be placed in the right hand of statues. For 

 instance, in a temple there would be a variety of gods placed 



