Stirling enjoys the distinction, in local antiquities (which Edinburgh does not) of having been a Roman station. It is situated about ten miles to the north of the wall which Lollius Urbicus, the lieutenant of Antoninus, built between the firths of Forth and Clyde, to restrain the remoter barbarians; and the vestiges of a road of incursion, or military causeway, which the Romans afterwards led north by Ardoch, have been discovered in such a direction on both sides of the town, as to prove that the castle was upon its line. On the south side of the town, in particular, near the village of Newhouse, traces of this road were distinctly seen not many years ago, in improving a piece of marshy ground in the field called Clifford Park, immediately behind the house of the proprietor. At the conclusion of the seventeenth century, a stone near the castle bore this inscription: ‘_IN EXCU. AGIT. LEG. II._,’ which being extended into ‘_In excubias agitantes legionis secundæ_,’ means, that the soldiers of the second legion there held nightly and daily watch. (1)[A] [A] The figures refer to Notes at the end. During the middle ages, when this country, like the Saxon heptarchy, was divided among various small parcels of people, Stirling was upon the confines of the Scottish empire on the south, and of the British on the north; that is to say, the predecessors of the present royal family of Britain were at the head of a tribe of Scots occupying the country north from this, while the three nations of provincial or Romanized Britons or Bretts, occupied various longitudinal stripes of what is now called the south of Scotland, and the north of England, having the Forth for their boundary. This fact seems to be alluded to by the insignia which figure on the obverse of the ancient seal of the corporation of Stirling—a bridge, with a crucifix in the centre of it, men armed with bows on the one side of the bridge, and men armed with spears on the other, and the legend, _Hic armis Bruti et Scoti stant hac cruce tutt_. While thus placed in command of a pass between the countries of two or three different savage nations, each of which was disposed to aggress upon the other, it may be supposed, notwithstanding the peaceful announcement darkly insinuated by this legend, that the bridge and fields of Stirling were often drenched with native blood.