174 president's address. 



we drove off in a drizzle, and had our reward, for the sky 

 cleared and we had no more rain till night. Birdoswald, with 

 its Roman station, was passed, and then the meagre ruins of 

 Triermain Peel-house. At Askerton a stop was made, some 

 Wall-rue [Asplenium Ruta-muraria), and other ferns gathered, 

 and the winding stairs of the Castle mounted, charming views 

 were got over Cumhrian hills, Solway Firth, and South Scot- 

 land. Seats resumed, the wilds of bleak Spadeadam waste were 

 enjoyed at a distance, a few Orchis latifolia were secured, and 

 then all eyes centered on the Castle which marked our goal, 

 Beweastle. Once an important place, now a house or two, the 

 Church and Eectory, an inn and a farm, with the ruins, are all 

 that remain. The " Lime Kiln Inn" offered its best and could 

 no more. Kirkbeck crossed, the boundary of the ancient British 

 camp and its outlying earthworks were patrolled; the stone 

 walls of the subsequent Eoman camp traversed, and the still 

 later IN'orman Castle leisurely examined, when all gathered at 

 the foot of the earliest Christian English Cross in the kingdom. 

 Once a cross some seventeen feet high, like its only sister at 

 Ruthwell, now a slender pillar fifteen feet high, tapering from a 

 two feet square at the base to a sixteen inch square at the broken 

 summit. The top was broken even in Camden's time, 1607, 

 and an insertion in his book at the Bodleian Library, Oxford, 

 records its recovery. The beautiful designs on the four faces of 

 the shaft are wondrously well preserved, and on it, in Eunie 

 characters, one may yet spell out the earliest known words in 

 the English language. 



Besides the names of such well-known persons as Oswy, "Wil- 

 frid, Alcfrid, Ecfrid, and Cyneburga, we find "kings, kinges, 

 preast, sowl, this, beacon, sett, ean (one), and at least twice, 

 the name of Jesus. By this cross, 1895 joins hands with 670, 

 and let us hope hearts too. When these features had been care- 

 fully examined, the President gave a brief historical sketch. 

 This cross was set up in the year 670 in what was then, as it is 

 now, a churchyard; when the English nation was not yet born, 

 but was quickening to the birth ; when Jute, Saxon, and Angle 

 with Britisli help were merging into Englishmen, and Britain 



