legion; but this bas-relief seems to refer, in some dark manner, to matters connected with the ancient heathen mysteries. The form of the border around them is remarkable. The stone which bears them was, I apprehend, brought in its present state from Vindolana, where, as I have observed, an inscription to the Syrian goddess was formerly found. The station of Magna also, a few years since, produced a long inscription to the same goddess in the Iambic verse of the Latin comedians; and a cave, containing altars to Mithras, and a bust of that god, seated between the two hemispheres and surrounded by the twelve signs of the Zodiac, besides other signa and ἄγαλματα of the Persian god, was opened at Borcovicus only about ten years since. These, therefore, and other similar remains, found in the Roman stations in the neighbourhood of Vindolana, induce me to think that the symbols under consideration, and now for the first time taken notice of, were originally placed near the altars of some divinity in the station of the Bowers-in-the-Wood. I know of no establishment that the Knights Templars had in this neighbourhood.” The modesty of “V. W.” is not less than his diligence; and both, I consider, exemplary and great. But he will excuse me when I tell him that the _Cross_, the _Crescent_, and the _Cockatrice_, are still _maiden_ subjects after his hands. Neither Faber, Shaw, nor Suidas, pretend even to approach those matters, save in their _emblematic_ sense; and, as every emblem must have a substratum, I for one, cannot content myself with that remote and secondary knowledge which is imparted by the _exoteric type_, but must enter the penetralia, and explore the secrets of the _eisoteric temple_. “As an old serpent casts his scaly vest, Wreaths in the sun in youthful glory dress’d; So, when Alcides’ mortal mould resign’d, His better part enlarg’d, and grew refin’d; August his visage shone; almighty Jove In his swift car his honoured offspring drove: High o’er the hollow clouds the coursers fly, And lodge the hero in the starry sky.”[244] CHAPTER XVII. “Chilly as the climate of the world is growing--artificial and systematic as it has become--and unwilling as we are to own the fact, there are few amongst us but who have had those feelings once strongly entwined around the soul, and who have felt how dear was their possession when existing, and how acute the pang which their severing cost. Fewer still were the labyrinths unclosed in which their affections lay folded, but in whose hearts the name of _woman_ would be found, although the rough collision with the world may have partially effaced it.”