that a modern inscription might be cut upon it to commemorate
"Alexander Duff and His Thrie Wives." The beautiful sculptured stone of
Golspie has been desecrated in the same way. Only two of these ancient
sculptured stones are known south of the Forth. One of them has been
preserved by having been used as a window-lintel in the church of
Abercorn--the venerable episcopal see, in the seventh century, of
Trumwine, the Bishop of the Picts. The other serves the purpose of a
foot-bridge within a hundred yards of the spot where we are met; and it
is to be hoped that its proprietors will allow this ancient stone to be
soon removed from its present ignominious situation to an honoured place
in our Museum. I saw, during last autumn, in Anglesey, a stone bearing a
very ancient Romano-British legend, officiating as one of the posts of a
park gate--a situation in which several such inscribed stones have been
found. Still more lately, I was informed of the large central monolith
in a stone circle, not far from the Scottish border, having been thrown
down and split up into seven pairs of field gate-posts.

"Standing-stones"--the old names of which gave their appellations to the
very manors on which they stood--have been repeatedly demolished in
Scotland. An obelisk of thirteen feet in height, and imparting its name
to a landed estate in Kincardineshire, was recently thrown down; and a
large monolith, which lent its old, venerable name to a property and
mansion within three or four miles of Edinburgh, was, within the memory
of some living witnesses, uprooted and totally demolished when the
direction of the turnpike road in its neighbourhood happened to be
altered.

* * * * *

A healthier and finer feeling in regard to the propriety of preserving
such national antiquities as I have referred to, subsists, I believe, in
the heart of the general public of Scotland, than perhaps those who are
their superiors in riches and rank generally give them credit for.
Within this century the standing-stones of Stennis in Orkney were
attacked, and two or three of them overthrown by an iconoclast; but the
people in the neighbourhood resented and arrested the attempt by
threatening to set fire to the house and corn of the barbaric aggressor.
After the passing of the Parliamentary Reform Bill, during a keen
contest for the representation of a large Scottish county, there was
successfully urged in the public journals aga