lish overran Cumberland very slowly; and when they did finally
conquer it, they probably left the original inhabitants in possession
of the country, and only imposed their own overlordship upon the
conquered race. The story is too long a one to repeat in full here: it
must suffice to say that, though the Northumbrian kings had made the
'Strathclyde Welsh' their tributaries, the district was never
thoroughly subdued till the days of Edmund the West Saxon, who harried
the land, and handed it over to the King of Scots. Thus it happens that
Carlisle, alone among large English towns, still keeps unchanged its
Cymric name, instead of having sunk into an Anglicised Chester. The
present spelling is a mere etymological blunder, exactly similar to
that which has turned the old English word _igland_ into _island_,
through the false analogy of _isle_, which of course comes from the old
French _isle_, derived through some form akin to the Italian _isola_,
from the original Latin _insula_. Kair Leil is the spelling in
Geoffrey; Cardeol (by a clerical error for Carleol, I suspect) that in
the _English Chronicle_, which only once mentions the town; and Carleol
that of the ordinary mediaeval historians. The surnames Carlyle and
Carlile still preserve the better orthography.

To complete the subject, it will be well to say a few words about those
towns which were once _Ceasters_, but which have never become Casters
or Chesters. Numerous as are the places now so called, a number more
may be reckoned in the illimitable chapter of the might-have-beens; and
it is interesting to speculate on the forms which they would have
taken, 'si qua fata aspera rupissent.' Among these still-born Chesters,
Newcastle-upon-Tyne may fairly rank first. It stands on the Roman site,
called, from its bridge across the Tyne, Pons Aelii, and known later
on, from its position on the great wall, as Ad Murum. Under the early
English, after their conversion to Christianity, the monks became the
accepted inheritors of Roman ruins; and the small monastery which was
established here procured it the English name of Muneca-ceaster, or, as
we should now say, Monk-chester, though no doubt the local
modernisation would have taken the form of Muncaster. William of
Normandy utterly destroyed the town during his great harrying of
Northumberland; and when his son, Robert Curthose, built a fortress on
the site, the place came to be called Newcastle--a word whose very form
shows it