thoroughly subdued till the days of Edmund the West Saxon, who harried the land, and handed it over to the King of Scots. Thus it happens that Carlisle, alone among large English towns, still keeps unchanged its Cymric name, instead of having sunk into an Anglicised Chester. The present spelling is a mere etymological blunder, exactly similar to that which has turned the old English word _igland_ into _island_, through the false analogy of _isle_, which of course comes from the old French _isle_, derived through some form akin to the Italian _isola_, from the original Latin _insula_. Kair Leil is the spelling in Geoffrey; Cardeol (by a clerical error for Carleol, I suspect) that in the _English Chronicle_, which only once mentions the town; and Carleol that of the ordinary mediaeval historians. The surnames Carlyle and Carlile still preserve the better orthography. To complete the subject, it will be well to say a few words about those towns which were once _Ceasters_, but which have never become Casters or Chesters. Numerous as are the places now so called, a number more may be reckoned in the illimitable chapter of the might-have-beens; and it is interesting to speculate on the forms which they would have taken, 'si qua fata aspera rupissent.' Among these still-born Chesters, Newcastle-upon-Tyne may fairly rank first. It stands on the Roman site, called, from its bridge across the Tyne, Pons Aelii, and known later on, from its position on the great wall, as Ad Murum. Under the early English, after their conversion to Christianity, the monks became the accepted inheritors of Roman ruins; and the small monastery which was established here procured it the English name of Muneca-ceaster, or, as we should now say, Monk-chester, though no doubt the local modernisation would have taken the form of Muncaster. William of Normandy utterly destroyed the town during his great harrying of Northumberland; and when his son, Robert Curthose, built a fortress on the site, the place came to be called Newcastle--a word whose very form shows its comparatively modern origin. _Castra_ and _Ceasters_ were now out of date, and castles had taken their place. Still, we stick even here to the old root: for of course castle is only the diminutive _castellum_--a scion of the same Roman stock, which, like so many other members of aristocratic families, 'came over with William the Conqueror.' The word _castel_ is never used, I believe, in any English document before the Conquest; but in the very year of William's invasion, the _Chronicle_ tells us, 'Willelm earl came from Normandy into Pevensey, and wrought a castel at Hastings port.' So, while in France itself the word has declined through _chastel_ into _chateau_, we in England have kept it in comparative purity as castle.