I9i4-i9 x 5-] Hadrians Wall. 133 



evolved from a collection of rude and warring tribes of painted 

 barbarians into a rich and prosperous province of the Eoman 

 Empire. 



Not the rude legionary only, but the highest military and 

 civil genius of the Empire came to conquer and to administer. 

 Following the example of the great Julius, many of the 

 Emperors came to our shores — Claudius, Hadrian, Severus, 

 Constantine the Great amongst the most noted. It was in 

 the British wars that Vespasian and his son Titus went 

 through the rough preparation for the conquest of Judea and 

 the taking of Jerusalem, and but for the bravery of Titus 

 a British spear had cheated Vespasian of the wearing of the 

 Imperial purple. 



Lust of power and love of conquest brought the Eomans 

 among us in the first instance, but they stayed for more sub- 

 stantial reasons. It paid them to stay, and the great works 

 of military engineering in the north of England and the south 

 of Scotland were constructed under strong economic necessity, 

 to protect from the desperate irruption of the northern bar- 

 barians a settled and a civilised country rich in agricultural 

 and industrial pursuits. 



There are, in fact, two Eoman walls. The more northerly 

 of the two, the ' Antonine ' Wall, is a very near neighbour of 

 ours, and stretches from Carriclen, near Bo'ness, on the southern 

 shore of the Forth, to Old Kilpatrick, near Dumbarton, on the 

 northern shore of the Clyde, a distance of twenty- three miles. 

 But this is not the wall I am about to describe. Hadrian's 

 Wall, which stretches its seventy- eight miles of length between 

 the river Tyne and the Solway Firth, is our objective, and it 

 quite easily bears away the palm from its more northern rival 

 in the magnitude of its conception, in the strength of its 

 defensive position, and in the cost in time, labour, and money 

 involved in its construction. It is the earlier wall, erected by 

 Agricola (79-85 a.d.), and renewed and strengthened (121 a.d.) 

 by order of the Emperor Hadrian, from whom it takes its 

 name. The northern wall was renewed in the reign of 

 Antonius Pius about the year 142 a.d. 



Hadrian's Wall may be best approached from Edinburgh 

 by the East Coast route to Newcastle, or by the West 

 Coast route to Carlisle ; or thirdly, by breaking off from the 



