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Still and soft with the
mild radiance of early spring the afternoon sunshine sleeps upon the rich
country, moor and woodland and meadow, that stretches away southward
towards the Border. The top of a ruined tower far off rises grey amid the
shadowy woods, and a river, like a shining serpent, gleams in blue
windings through the russet valley-land, while the smoke of an ancient
Border town hangs in the distance, like an amber haze, above the side of
its narrow strath. Northward, too, league upon league, sweep the rich
pasture-lands of another river valley. The red roofs of more than one
peaceful hamlet glow warm there among the bowering road-avenues of ancient
trees. And far off at the foot of the purple mountain yonder to the west
lies the grey sequestered abbey of the Bruce. North and south upon that
rich landscape history marks with a crimson stain the field of many a
battle; and though peace and silence sleep upon it to-day in the sunshine,
hardly is there hamlet or meadow in sight whose name does not recall some
struggle of bygone days. Across these hills a hundred and forty years ago
Prince Charles Edward led the last raid of the clans, and before his time
the battlefields of Douglas and Percy, of Cumberland and Liddesdale, carry
the mind back into the mists of antiquity, out of which looms the sullen
splendour of more classic arms.
Here, straight as a
swan-flight along the ridge of the water-shed, commanding the country for
miles upon either side, still runs the ancient highway of Imperial Rome.
From the golden milestone of Augustus in the Capitol, in a line scarce
broken by the blue straits of the sea, ran hither the path of that ancient
Power. Of old, along these far-stretching arteries came pulsing in tidal
waves the iron blood of the stern heart beating far away in the south.
From the wooded valleys below, the awed inhabitants doubtless long ago
looked up and wondered, as the dark masses of the legions came rolling
along these hills.
Tide after tide, like the
rising sea, they rolled to break upon the Grampian barriers of the North.
Here rode Agricola, his face set towards the dark and mist-wrapt mountains
beyond the Forth, eager to add by their conquest the word "Britannicus" to
his name. Here by his side, it is probable, rode the courtly Tacitus, his
son-in-law, to describe to future ages the Scotland of that time,
"lashed," as he knew it, "by the billows of a prodigious sea." Southward
here, stern and intent, once sped the swift couriers bearing to Rome
tidings of that great battle at Mons Grampus, where the bodies of ten
thousand Caledonians slain barred the northward march of the Roman
general. Southward, again, along this road it is almost certain has passed
the majesty of a Roman Emperor himself. For in the year 211 the
Emperor Severus, ill and angry, leaving fifty thousand dead among the
unsubdued mountains of the north, was borne out of Scotland by the remnant
of his army, to die of chagrin at York. And here, long ago, by his
flickering watch-fire at night, the Roman sentinel, perhaps, has let his
thoughts wander again sadly to his home by the yellow Tiber two thousand
miles away, to the vine-clad cot where the dark-eyed sister of his
boyhood, the little Livia or Tessa, would be ripening now like the olives,
with no one to care for and protect her.
Fifteen hundred years ago, however,
the last yellow-haired captives had been carried south to whet the wonder
of the populace in the triumph of a Roman general. Fifteen hundred years
ago the power of the Imperial city had begun to wane, and the tide of her
conquest ebbed along these hills. The eagles of the empire swept southward
to defend their own eyrie upon the Palatine, and here, along the highways
they had made, died the tramp of the departing legions. The tides of later
wars, it is true, have flowed and ebbed across the Border. Saxon and
Norman, both in turn, have set their faces towards the north. But later
nations kept lower paths, and, untrodden here along the hill-tops, like
the great Roman Empire itself, this chariot-way of the Caesars has looked
down upon them all. Forsaken, indeed, and altogether lonely it is now.
Torn by the rains of fifteen centuries, and overgrown with the tangle of a
thousand years, the roadway that rang to the hoofs of Agricola is haunted
to-day by the timid hare, while overhead, where the sun glittered once on
the golden eagles of the legions, grey wood-doves flutter now among the
trees. But, strongly marked by its moss-grown ramparts, it still bears
witness to the might of its makers, and, affording no text for the sad
Sic transit gloria mundi, it remains a Roman defiance to time, like
the defiance of all true greatness—Non
omnis moriar.
Greater benefits than these roads of
stone did the Roman bring to the lands he conquered. The tread of the
victorious legions it was that broke the dark slumber of Europe, and in
the onward march of the western nations the footsteps of the Caesars echo
yet upon the earth. Rome, it is true, ploughed her empire with the sword,
but in the furrows she sowed the seeds of her own greatness; and these
seeds since then have grown to many a stately tree. Fallen, it may be, is
the splendour of the "city upon seven hills"; but east and north and west
of her rise the younger empires of her sons. Augustus from his gilded
Capitol no longer rules the world, and the gleam of the steel-clad legions
no longer flashes along these old forsaken highways among the hills; but
the earth is listening yet, spell-bound, to the strains of the Latin lyre,
and wherever to this hour there is eloquence in the West, there flourishes
the living glory of the Roman tongue.
To-day, with the coming of
spring in the air, there are symbols enough on every hand of the great
Past that is not dead. The bole of the giant beech-tree here, it is
true, has itself long since ceased to put forth leaves; but, springing
upward from its strength, a hundred branches are spreading aloft the
promise of the budding year. The dry brown spires of foxglove that stand
six feet high in the coppice near, dropped months ago their purple
splendours; but thick already about their roots the green tufts of their
seedlings are pushing up through rich mould and warm leaf-drifts of bygone
autumn to fill the place anon with tenfold glory. From the gnarled roots
of the ancient thorn-hedge hangs many a yellow tress of withered fern; yet
the life of the fallen fronds is, even now, stirring under-ground, and
from the brown knobs there before long will rise the greenery of another
year. Already, here and there, in sunny nooks, a spray of the prickly whin
has burst into blossom of bright gold. A little longer, and the mossy
crannies of the ruined dyke will be purple with the dim wood-violet. And
soon, in the steep corner of the immemorial pasture that runs up there
under the edge of the wood, the deep sward will be tufted with creamy
clusters of the pale primrose.
A pleasant spot it is to
linger in, even on this early spring day, for the sunshine falls warm in
the mossy hollow of the road, and rampart and thicket overhead are a
shelter from the wind. Resting on the dry branch of a fallen pine, one can
gaze away southward over the landscape that the Romans saw; and, fingering
through a pocket volume of some old Augustan singer, it is possible to
realise something of the iron thought that stirred them to become masters
of the world. |
