“Carlisle?” asked Frank Gray, glancing at the evidences of business energy about the station. “Carlisle? I have heard that the city was a thousand years old.”
“An old city may grow,” said Master Lewis, on the way to the hotel. “In 1800, Carlisle had but 4,000 inhabitants, now it has more than 30,000.”
Carlisle was the ancient seat of the kings of Cambria, and was a Roman station in the early days of the Christian era. It was destroyed in 900 by the Danes, was ravaged by the Picts and Scots, was doubtless visited by Agricola, Severus, and Hadrian, and it has a part in the history of all the Border wars. Here half-forgotten kings lived; here Roman generals made their airy camps, and near it the grotesque ships of Roman emperors dropped their sails in the Solway. Here Christianity made an early advent, and the hideous rites of the Druid priests disappeared.
ROMANS INVADING BRITAIN.
The ancient Druids worshipped in sacred groves; the oaks were their fanes and chapels, but they erected immense stone temples open to the sky, the moon, and stars: these were their cathedrals. In them were great stones used as altars of sacrifice, and on their altars the dark and mysterious priests offered up human victims to their gods.
The country around Carlisle abounds in Roman and Druidical relics, and in antiquities associated with the Border contests. At Penrith may be seen the ruins of a Druid temple, formed of sixty-seven immense stones, called “long Meg and her daughters.”
The Isle of Man, the ancient and poetic Mona, whose grand scenery was once the supposed abode of the gods of the Saxons, lies near the Solway, and to it excursion steamers go from the western coast towns of England carrying pleasure seekers all the long summer days. Here the Druids gathered after the defeat of the Saxons by the Romans, and thither the Romans followed them, and fell upon the long-bearded priests and the wild torch-bearing priestesses, and put them to the sword. The island of Mona may be called the Druid’s sepulchre.
The afternoon was rainy, and the boys, though impatient, were confined to the hotel.