His Birthplace and its Influences. 17 



and British life of the city we have little to 

 tell ; but that it had a long Roman and 

 British life no man can doubt. Under various 

 shapes and corruptions of its Roman and 

 British name, we find it in every list of the 

 cities of Britain. Luguballium or Luguballia 

 occupies a site which seems marked out by 

 nature for a great fortress. It is a site 

 specially designed to guard a border, to de- 

 fend a land against dangerous neighbours, 

 who may one day become wasting invaders. 

 And this duty the hill of Luguballia has 

 had laid upon it through more than one long 

 period, in the hands of more than one set of 

 masters. I was once tempted to say that it 

 is not without a certain fitness that the 

 spot which was to be the bulwark of England 

 against the Scot should of itself put on some- 

 what of a Scottish character. I pointed out 

 that the castle hill of Carlisle bore a strong- 

 likeness in miniature to the castle hills of 

 Edinburgh and Stirling. In all three the 

 castle crowns a hill, steep at one end only. It 

 crowns it therefore in a different sense from 

 those hill towns where the fortified acropolis 

 forms the centre of the city. At Edinburgh, 



