(some say it was the earl himself), who slashed him, while lying in his last agony, in the face with his sword. Moray, one of the handsomest men of his day, looked up at the illfavoured brute and gasped out these last words, "Ye hae spoiled a far fairer face than yer ain."

Some miles off the shore is an island, marked by a low square tower and some ruined walls. This is Inchcolm, or the Island of St. Columba, on which was once a wealthy abbey, founded in memory of a king's escape from the dangers of the Firth. More than seven and a half centuries since, King Alexander I. was crossing the Firth at Queensferry, when his boat was driven out of its course by a sudden storm, and was steered for this island as the nearest place of refuge. When the king had landed, which was not effected without much difficulty, he found it tenanted only by a hermit, who supported life on the milk of a single

cow, and shell-fish gathered from the rocks. Here the king and his train were weatherbound for three days, and had to be content with the same sorry fare. In the height of his danger he had entreated the protection of St. Columba, and had vowed that if he reached the shore in safety he would found there a monastery in honour of the saint. This he accordingly did, and in due time the Abbey of Inchcolm became one of the wealthiest of the district.

Beyond this is the old town of Inverkeithing, and beyond it Queensferry—so called, it is said, because this passage across the Firth was frequently used by Margaret, queen of Malcolm Canmore. From the Fifeshire shore a promontory juts out, diminishing the breadth of the channel by about one-half, so that from shore to shore is less than two miles. This distance, too, is interrupted by the island of Inchgarvie. In former days this was one of the most beautiful parts of the Firth. The little islands dotted on the water, the woods of Donibristle, the houses of Inverkeithing, and the ruined castle of Rosyth standing at the water's edge on the northern shore, the richer scenery of Dalmeny Park and the ground around Hopetoun House, with the waters of the Firth on the one

hand reaching far up into the country, on the other widening out to the German Ocean, afforded many pleasant prospects. At the present time a railway viaduct is in process of construction across the Firth, from North to South Queensferry-a triumph, doubtless, of engineering, for the intervals between its piers are to be unusually great, and it is to be lofty enough to allow ships of considerable size to pass beneath; but how far it will improve the scenery is a dubious matter. When this is completed, the county will be both entered and left by a viaduct of exceptional magnitude; for Dundee is now connected with the coast of Fife by the well-known "Tay Bridge," a structure of iron lattice-work, so light as to seem absolutely fragile, yet daily bearing the weight of heavily laden trains.

62

DURHAM.

Position of the Town-An Ecclesiastical Prince St. Cuthbert-His History - Foundation of Durham - The Cathedral -Palace Green-The Galilee-Interior-The Chapel of the Nine Altars - The Tomb of St. Cuthbert-Wyatt's "Restorations"-The Monastery-Durham Castle - The University-The Town and the Churches-Neville's

Cross.

DURHAM is in situation without a parallel among the

cities of Britain-with but few resemblances to those

of the Continent. The country around is an undulating tableland of pasture and scattered copses, carved into trench-like valleys by winding streams. Of these the principal river, called the Wear, suddenly swinging round in a curve like an elongated horse-shoe, has excavated in the rock a glen with almost precipitous side, through which its waters rush. Near to the narrower part of its neck, the upper surface of the promontory thus formed sinks a little, and then rises again towards the margin of the glen. Thus the configuration of the ground may be compared to the wrist with the hand clenched, or to the outstretched paw of a lion. The town of Durham clusters in advance of and upon the depression, descending the gentler slopes on either side to the river, and mounting some distance up the opposite bank. The castle bars the access to the upper plateau, and on that the cathedral is placed, guarded thus, like a jewel in a casket, by fortress and river.

Unique in its situation, the city was formerly no less so in the authority of its bishop. Like Cheshire, Durham also was once a county palatine, but the count was here an ecclesiastic, not a layman. "The Prelate of Durham became one, and the more important, of the only two English prelates whose worldly franchises invested them with some faint shadow of the sovereign power enjoyed by the princely churchmen of the Empire. The Bishop of Ely in his island, the Bishop of Durham in his hill fortress, possessed powers which no other English ecclesiastic was allowed to share. Aidan and Cuthbert had led almost a hermit's life among their monks on their lonely island; their successors grew into the lords of a palatinate, in which it was not the peace of the king, but the peace of the bishop, which the wrong-doer was in legal language held to have broken. The external aspect of the city of itself suggests its peculiar character. Durham alone among English cities, with its highest point crowned not only by the minster, but by the vast castle of the prince-bishop, recalls to mind those cities of the Empire-Lausanne, or Chur, or Sittenwhere the priest, who bore alike the sword and the pastoral staff, looked down from his fortified height on a flock which he had to guard no less against worldly than against ghostly foes."*

With these cities of Europe, Durham has much in common so far as concerns its jurisdiction; it has still more in situation with Avignon and with Laon. Of these, more than any other that we have seen, it has reminded us. Yet from both it differs in at least one important particular. Avignon, from its castellated rock, looks over the wide valley of the Rhone; Laon, on its crescentic hill, rises above the plains of Champagne; but the hill of

* Freeman, "Norman Conquest," p. 321.

Durham is only a part of an undulating plateau, isolated by the deep glen of the Wear, which to this natural fortress forms a gigantic moat, a perfect defence before the days of modern artillery. Yet, though the site appears one of those which nature has marked out for a fortress, Durham, compared with some places in Britain, is not a very old town. There is no tradition, strange though it may seem, that there was a British settlement upon this headland. Four and a half centuries had passed after the English had first founded the kingdom of Bernicia before any use was made of the natural advantage of the plateau by the Wear. Then its occupants were ecclesiastics; the site was chosen to defend the corpse rather than the life of a man. Perhaps this long neglect may have been due to the fact that over all this district about the valley of the Wear great forests extended; so that, in the words of an old writer, "the topography of the city at that tyme" (when first founded) "was that it was more beholding to nature for fortification than fertilitie, where thick woods both hindered the starres from viewing the earth, and the earth from the prospect of heaven."

The story of Durham's foundation is associated with the history of the saint-Cuthbert of Lindisfarne-whose body it has guarded for nearly nine centuries. He has been to its minster what St. Werburgh was to Chester, Etheldreda to Ely, Alban to St. Albans, and Thomas to Canterbury. In one respect perhaps he stands alone, like his cathedral, for he was the ascetic of the early English Church-distinguished above his brethren by the severity of his mortifications and his abhorrence of women. At his shrine none of that sex might worship, into the church they might only enter, within the priory even a queen might not lodge.*

In the characters of many saints of the Western Church, austere as they may be, a vein of tenderness is blended. They had their pet animals, like Serf or Guthlac, or even Godric. They loved to gather around them younger disciples, like Columba or Bede, like David of Wales, or Gregory of Rome; they were founders of communities, like Benedict or Francis. Cuthbert, though zealous in winning souls, had in some respects the temperament of the saints of the East, to whom the sight of man was a weariness, and the solitude of the desert a delight. He was a disciple rather of Simeon of the Pillar than of any anchorite of the West.

This is Cuthbert's history so far as it can be told in brief, apart from the prodigies which later devotees have imported into it. He was born about the middle of the seventh century, in the district of Scotland which is now called the Lothians. Legend attributes to him an illustrious ancestry; it is, however, almost certain that he was of humble origin, and that his earlier years were passed as a shepherd on the banks of the Lauder, a stream which enters the Tweed not far from Melrose. While still a young man he presented himself to the prior of the monastery which even then existed at that place, and found a friend in Eata, its abbot. The austerity of his life soon raised him high in reputation among the brethren, and after some years he accompanied his patron to Ripon, on his appointment to the charge of that monastery. Here they did not remain, but returned

Queen Philippa had been admitted there as a guest, but a tumult arose, and she was obliged to escape half-dressed into the castle. Various reasons are given for this aversion on the part of the saint.

before long to Melrose. After this Cuthbert sickened of an epidemic wnich was ravaging the country, and his recovery was deemed hopeless. In answer, however, as we are told, to the united prayers of the brethren, he was restored to health as by a miracle; but the disease proved fatal to another member of the house, Boisil, the prior. Cuthbert was appointed his successor; but after awhile he quitted Melrose to become Prior of Lindisfarne. After twelve years of work in this post, the craving for solitude became too strong to be

resisted, and he left the monastery for a lonely spot in the neighbourhood, the exact locality of which is uncertain. This before long was deserted for another yet wilder, yet more solitary. Off the Northumbrian coast is a group of rocky islands, even now thinly peopled, and often cut off from all access by the stormy waters. To Farne, the largest of these, Cuthbert betook himself. There he raised a cell, after the fashion of the "beehive" huts, the ruins of which still remain in some of the lonelier districts of Britain, and not unlike those in which the Lapps dwell at the present day in Norway-and there, with no other companions but the sea-birds, he gave himself up to prayer and fasting. If we are to believe the legend, miracles were abundantly wrought by the solitary saint.