The lines in the sixth Satire of Juvenal to which I desire to call your attention begin at verse 541. The poet is inveighing against the superstitions which he ascribes to the Roman ladies.

In the year 1825 some labourers who were employed in draining a swampy field upon a farm belonging to the Featherstone Castle estate came upon what seemed to be part of the trunk of an oak-tree. Finding that it impeded the progress of their work they endeavoured to cut it out with an axe, when to their surprise they discovered that the trunk was hollowed and contained some human bones, which, however, speedily became dust when exposed to the air. Proceeding with their work they found the remains of four more coffins of the same kind, in one of which was part of a skull.

The recent publication of The Recovery of Jerusalem assists us materially in solving some of the most perplexing questions as to the topography of the Holy City. The points of greatest interest are 1. The genuineness of the Holy Sepulchre; 2. The lines of the walls; and, 3. The relative sites of the Temple and Antonia and the Acra.

The Thirtieth Volume of the Archæologia contains, at page 40, a letter by Mr. John M. Kemble on a so-called Runic inscription, “cut in basso-relievo upon the rim of a pure copper dish, which was dug up nearly a century and a half ago, on the site of the once celebrated monastery of St. Peter” at Chertsey. Mr. Kemble's reading of the inscription (here engraved of the actual size) is GÆTEOHURÆCKO, which he divides into the two words GÆTEOH and URÆCKO. As these words offer certain difficulties, as for instance-the o final, and “the archaic character of the u for w and CK for CC,” he suggests that the dish, which he thinks may date “in its present form from the eleventh or even the twelfth century,” is a copy of one, the first carving of which “may be referred to a period little short of the foundation of the monastery itself, in other words to the close of the seventh century.”

It is the common and inveterate opinion of modern writers, and it seems to be accepted by all antiquaries in the present day, that Britain remained unvisited by the Romans, and free from subjection to the Roman empire, from the time when Julius Cæsar left our shores to the expedition of Claudius and his conquest of the south-eastern part of the island, almost a century afterward. That is a long interval, extending from B.C. 54 to a.d. 43, a period of not less than ninety-five years; and, if the common opinion be true, there is a great and terrible blank in our national history, immediately following the events which had made our nation known to the Roman world.

The evidence of an important fact which. I have lately made known to the Society of Antiquaries, bridging over (as it does) a whole century of our unwritten history, consists principally in the direct and positive assertion of it by the ancient commentator and critic, Servius; and the only objection that I have heard, publicly or privately, against the veracity of his statement, and the consequent view that I have taken of those passages in the Augustan Poets which relate to Britain, amounts to this, that we are required thereby to impugn or reject the opinions of two respectable historians more ancient than the commentator, namely, Cornelius Tacitus and Suetonius Tranquillus. I have thought proper therefore to vindicate in this second paper the authority of Servius, against the negative opinions of those other Roman writers, and their numerous followers.

The chapel of S. John Baptist, the north-western of the four polygonal chapels which surround the apse of Westminster Abbey, differs from the remaining three in that it is now entered, not by a door in the middle of the screen separating it from the ambulatory, but by a kind of vestibule cut through the northern of the two great piers which fill up the spaces between the last of the rectangular and the first of the polygonal chapels. It is to this vestibule that I wish to call attention, and in doing so I shall first desrcibe it in its present condition, and then point out the various changes which it seems to have undergone, and endeavour to draw some conclusions as to its history and the uses to which it has been put.

Last autumn I had an opportunity of examining some reliques recently acquired by the Museum of Zürich, which appeared to me to possess considerable interest. I am now in a condition to place these matters before the Society, having been furnished with the necessary drawings and illustrations, through the kindness of our friend and colleague, Dr. Ferdinand Keller of Zürich. Much, also, of what I am about to say is derived from the same excellent source.

I am permitted by Robert F. Dalrymple, Esq., to exhibit to the Society of Antiquaries a remarkable and interesting document connected with the English occupation of Paris, at the time when King Henry the Fifth was recognised as the heir of his father-in-law Charles the Sixth.

In the year 1841 the British Museum purchased of the Reverend Thomas Butler, among some of the most valuable manuscripts and antiquities it possesses, six remarkable inscriptions, one Greek, four Latin, and one Italian, apparently inscribed with a sharply pointed stylus, upon plates of lead, beaten or hammered to about the thickness of a wafer, and now completely patinated. As these do not appear to have been published, I propose to lay before you a description of them, accurate copies of their texts, and a few notes explanatory of the history and dates to which they refer.

None of the phenomena of Nature can earlier, or more widely, or more deeply have attracted notice and curiosity than the phenomena of the Seasons ; and none, probably, earlier or more widely became embodied in art and poetry. For that reason few subjects, probably, would prove of greater interest in themselves, or in the light which they reflected, incidentally, on the life and thought of those who have gone before us, if undertaken by an accomplished antiquary, than the enumeration, and description, and comparison of the different modes of representing the Seasons employed in different countries and ages, from the earliest to the latest times. Few subjects, on the other hand, could be chosen less fit for unexhaustive or discursive treatment, or that would sooner exhibit the incompetence of him who is incapable of more. I would willingly, however, bear this reflection, should the notes which I have collected be thought worthy of the attention of this Society, or should they, imperfect as they are, hereafter induce others, more able than myself, to contribute what they have seen and thought upon the subject.

A few years ago, in commenting upon certain inscriptions published by Dr. Bruce, I contended that they referred to the estates of Roman colonists called centuriæ, and not to the cohortal divisions known by the same name, as maintained by Dr. Bruce. In a later publication Dr. Bruce controverts my view and reasserts his own. Thus there is a distinct antiquarian issue between us. As such divergences of opinion will never be rare in archæology, I should have left the matter where it stood if there were not something else to import into the question, which at the time I had the honour of bringing the subject before the Society I did not think necessary to state, believing that my evidences were sufficient without it. What I now refer to, and propose to import, are two rules of the formal language of Rome, which of their own force determine the meaning of the word centuria, according as it occurs in conjunction with one quality of proper name or another.