SESSION 1914-1915. 



VII.— HADRIAN'S WALL. 

 By Mr ROBEET LINDSAY. 



(Comimmicated, Nov. 25, 191 4-) 



Being present recently at a lecture on a holiday in Italy, 

 I remarked the interest with which were received the views of 

 Pompeii, which showed us the evidences of the social and 

 domestic life of the city before its destruction. We saw the 

 inscriptions in the ruined houses and temples, the ruts made 

 by the chariot wheels in the streets, and all those other touch- 

 ing evidences of a vanished civilisation once as real and as living 

 as our own, and this brought to my mind some Roman remains 

 nearer home, among which my wife and I had been spending 

 a pleasant and a profitable holiday. Few of us, I fear, even 

 in these days of cheap travelling, can ever hope to stand amid 

 the ruins of Pompeii, or to recall amid the actual scenes those 

 feelings which arise at the mention of the Forum or the 

 Colosseum of Rome. But it is well within the power of any 

 one so minded, without travelling beyond the confines of these 

 islands, to stand amid some of the most impressive evidences 

 of Roman power, and to look upon the remains of a vanished 

 civilisation, all the more interesting to us in that it bore so 

 closely on the history and on the fortunes of our own people. 

 I have not mentioned Rome . and Pompeii in order to 

 suggest that there is any comparison, so far as beauty or 



