with branching stems, the branches to the left denoting the class, and those to the right the position in that class. There is an inscription in secret runes of this description at Hackness, in Yorkshire. 3. _Stof-runa_, in which the class is indicated by points placed above, and the position in the class by points below, or the reverse. The best-known inscriptions in the Anglo-Saxon character are those on two grave-stones at Hartlepool, in Northumberland, on a cross at Bewcastle, in Cumberland, and on another cross at Ruthwell, in Dumfriesshire. The inscription on the west side of Bewcastle cross, which we give as a specimen of Anglo-Saxon runes, is a memorial of Alcfrid, son of Oswiu, who was associated with his father in the government of the kingdom of Northumbria, in the seventh century. [Illustration: RUNES.] It has been thus deciphered into the Anglo-Saxon dialect of the period:— + THIS SIGBECUN SETTÆ HWÆTRED EM GÆRFÆ BOLDU ÆFTÆR BARÆ YMB CYNING ALCFRIDÆ GICEGÆD HEOSUM SAWLUM. Or, in Modern English:— This memorial Hwætred set and carved this monument after the prince after the king Alcfrid pray for their souls. The inscription on the Ruthwell cross, after being long a puzzle to antiquaries, was first deciphered in 1838 by Mr. John M. Kemble, an eminent Anglo-Saxon scholar. It is written alternately down one side of the stone and up another, and contains a portion of a poem on the subject of the Crucifixion. Mr. Kemble’s interpretation received a very satisfactory confirmation by the discovery of a more complete copy of the same poem in a MS. volume of Anglo-Saxon homilies at Vercelli. Mr. D. M. Haigh, whose researches have added much to our knowledge of Anglo-Saxon runes, has endeavoured to set up for them a claim of priority over the Norse characters. Instead of considering the additional Anglo-Saxon letters as a development of the Norse system, he looks on the Norse alphabet of sixteen letters as an abridgment of an earlier system, and finds occasional traces of the existence of the discarded characters in the earliest Norse inscriptions, and in the Scandinavian _Iis-runa_ and _Hahal-runa_, where the letters are classified in accordance with the Anglo-Saxon groups of eight.