This great joint railway station—the Citadel Station, as it is called—is neighboured by two enormous mediæval-looking drum towers of red sandstone, restorations of two of the same character built in the sixteenth century. They look none the less gloomy because they serve merely the purpose of Assize Courts, instead of fortifications. You must needs pass between them on entering Carlisle from the London road, and they are among the first things to dispel any idea the stranger may have brought with him that Carlisle is really “merry.”
There is that about the modern appearance of Carlisle which irresistibly reminds one of a ragged urchin clothed in some full-grown man’s trousers. Many things are too large for its circumstances. Two prominent things among the many that suggest this comparison are the unnecessary electric tramways and the noble Eden Bridge, carrying the road across the river to Stanwix. The bridge, built a hundred years ago, is monumental, and even the lamp-standards, designed for it at the same time, are fine. But the over-head trolley-wires are an offence to the spirit of the thing, and the city of Carlisle cares so little for it that ugly electric light standards are placed at intervals, and the fine old iron lamps that might so easily and handsomely have been adapted, now serve no useful purpose.
Crossing to Stanwix, we are at last on the Border, for here ran the Roman wall, on its way from Wallsend, near Newcastle-on-Tyne, to Bowness, dividing the civilisation of that time from the unknown savagery further north. Built about A.D. 121, at the instance of the Emperor Hadrian, it kept the painted, skin-clad “Picts” in their own wild country for over three hundred years, and employed a considerable garrison to patrol it and exercise a continual vigilance along those bitter, wind-swept miles. Many a gallant centurion, condemned to mounting guard in these ancient marches, has doubtless in the long ago leant over the ramparts of the Wall, and gazing into the shaggy forest and brushwood beyond, called down curses upon the “forward policy” in Rome, that pushed the limits of Empire into the frozen north, before the southernmost provinces were fully settled. Here was no society, and no glory in fighting with savages to be compared with that to be gained in campaigns against the armies of Carthage or of Greece.