Touching Runick inscriptions, I find that they may lie classed under three general heads; 1.  Those which are understood by the Danish Royal Society of Northern Antiquaries, and Professor Rafn, their Secretary; 2.  Those which are comprehensible only by Mr. Rafn; and 3.  Those which neither the Society, Mr. Rafn, nor anybody else can be said in any definite sense to understand, and which accordingly offer peculiar temptations to enucleating sagacity.  These last are naturally deemed the most valuable by intelligent antiquaries, and to this class the stone now in my possession fortunately belongs.  Such give a picturesque variety to ancient events, because susceptible oftentimes of as many interpretations as there are individual archaeologists; and since facts are only the pulp in which the Idea or event-seed is softly imbedded till it ripen, it is of little consequence what colour or flavour we attribute to them, provided it be agreeable.  Availing myself of the obliging assistance of Mr. Arphaxad Bowers, an ingenious photographick artist, whose house-on-wheels has now stood for three years on our Meeting-House Green, with the somewhat contradictory inscription,—­’our motto is onward,’—­I have sent accurate copies of my treasure to many learned men and societies, both native and European.  I may hereafter communicate their different and (me judice) equally erroneous solutions.  I solicit also, Messrs. Editors, your own acceptance of the copy herewith enclosed.  I need only premise further, that the stone itself is a goodly block of metamorphick sandstone, and that the Runes resemble very nearly the ornithichnites or fossil bird-tracks of Dr. Hitchcock, but with less regularity or apparent design than is displayed by those remarkable geological monuments.  These are rather the non bene junctarum discordia semina rerum.  Resolved to leave no door open to cavil, I first of all attempted the elucidation of this remarkable example of lithick literature by the ordinary modes, but with no adequate return for my labour.  I then considered myself amply justified in resorting to that heroick treatment the felicity of which, as applied by the great Bentley to Milton, had long ago enlisted my admiration.  Indeed, I had already made up my mind, that, in case good fortune should throw any such invaluable record in my way, I would proceed with it in the following simple and satisfactory method.  Alter a cursory examination, merely sufficing for an approximative estimate of its length, I would write down a hypothetical inscription based upon antecedent probabilities, and then proceed to extract from the characters engraven on the stone a meaning as nearly as possible conformed to this a priori product of my own ingenuity.  The result more than justified my hopes, inasmuch as the two inscriptions were made without any great violence to tally in all essential particulars.  I then proceeded, not without some anxiety, to my second test,