forms no kind of valid objection. The fact is, that all
the early Romano-British inscriptions as yet found in Great Britain,
are, as far as they have been discovered and deciphered, in Latin. And
it is not more strange that a Saxon in the Lothians should be recorded
in Latin, and not in Saxon or Keltic, than that the numerous Welshmen
and others recorded on the early Welsh inscribed stones should be
recorded in Latin and not in the Cymric tongue.

Doubtless, the Romanised Britons and the foreign colonists settled among
them were, with their descendants, more or less acquainted with Latin in
both its spoken and written forms. As early as the second year of his
march northward for the conquest of this more distant part of Britain,
or A.D. 79, Agricola, as Tacitus takes special care to inform us, took
all possible means to introduce, for the purposes of conquest and
civilisation, a knowledge of the Roman language and of the liberal arts
among the barbarian tribes whom he went to subdue.[209] The same policy
was no doubt continued to a greater or less extent during the whole era
of the Roman dominion here as elsewhere; so that there is no wonder that
such arts as lapidary writing, and the composition of brief Latin
inscriptions, should have been known to and transmitted to the native
Britons. There was, however, another class of inhabitants, besides these
native Britons, who were, as we know from the altars and stone monuments
which they have left, sufficiently learned in the formation and cutting
of inscriptions in Latin,--a language which was then, and for some
centuries subsequently, the only language used in this country, either
in lapidary or other forms of writing. The military legions and cohorts
which the Roman emperors employed to keep Britain under due subjection,
obtained, under the usual conditions, grants of lands in the country,
married, and became betimes fixed inhabitants. When speaking of the
veteran soldiers of Rome settling down at last as permanent proprietors
of land in Britain--as in other Roman colonies,--Sir Francis Palgrave
remarks, "Upwards of forty of these barbarian legions, _some of Teutonic
origin_, and others Moors, Dalmatians, and Thracians, whose forefathers
had been transplanted from the remotest parts of the empire, obtained
their domicile in various parts of our island, though principally upon
the northern and eastern coasts, and _in the neighbourhood of the Roman
walls_."[210] Such colon