immense wall, he caused a deep ditch to be dug, about thirty-six feet wide, while the wall itself was twelve feet in height; thus, from the bottom of the ditch on the northern side there rose a barrier about twenty-five feet high, which was also further strengthened by a large number of fortifications, and above three hundred turrets. But before Severus had well completed his gigantic labours, the Caledonians had again over-leaped the more northern barrier, and fought their way up to the new trenches. The grey-headed old hero vowed vengeance, and swore by "Mars the Red," that he would spare neither age nor sex. Death, who is sometimes merciful, kindly stepped in, and instead of allowing him to swing in his litter towards new scenes of slaughter, cut short his contemplated campaign at York, about the year two hundred and eleven; and after his death, the northern barrier was again given up to the Caledonians. A wearisome time must it have been to those old Roman legions, who had to keep guard on that long, monotonous wall, which went stretching for nearly seventy miles over hill and valley; nothing but a desolate country to look over, or that wide, yawning, melancholy ditch to peep into from the battlements, or a beacon-fire to light on the top of the turret, as a signal that the barbarians were approaching. An occasional skirmish must have been a relief to that weary round of every-day life, made up in marches from fort to fort, where there was no variety, saving in a change of sentries--no relief excepting now and then sallying out for forage; for between the outer and inner wall, the whole country seems at this period to have been a wilderness--a silent field of death, in which the bones of many a brave man were left to bleach in the bleak wind, and from which only the croak of the raven and the howl of the wolf came upon the long dark midnights that settled down over those ancient battlements. Sometimes the bold barbarians sailed round the end of the wall in their wicker boats, covered with "black bull's hide," and landed within the Roman intrenchments, or spread consternation amongst the British villages; but with the exception of an occasional inroad like this, the whole of the northern part of the island appears to have been quiet for nearly another century, during which the Roman arms seem to have become weakened, and the British tribes to have given themselves up more to the arts of peace than of war. Such privileges as were granted to the Roman citizens, were also now extended to the Britons; and under the dominion of Caracalla, the successor of Severus, there is but little doubt that the southern islanders settled peaceably down in their homesteads (now comfortable abodes), and began to be somewhat more Romanized in their manners, that marriages took place between the Romans and the Britons, and that love and peace had now settled down side by side, in those very spots which the stormy spirits of