The Anglo-Saxon legal procedure has failed to attract the attention either of the antiquary or the lawyer. The causes of this neglect, however, do not readily suggest themselves. As a practice it must have had merit, for amongst other germs which fructified under the fosterage of the Norman we find in it that of the English jury in a state of inception prompt for further development. With such bearings upon the future, this legal procedure may, I think, be reasonably regarded as a subject worthy of antiquarian research.

The copies of the four Letters from Lord Bacon to Christian IV. of Denmark, which I have the honour to lay before the Society of Antiquaries, were furnished to Sir Charles Murray, the British Minister at Copenhagen, by M. Wegener, the chief of the Royal Danish Archives, in consequence of an application made to the Foreign Office on my behalf. I can hardly be wrong in bespeaking the thanks of this Society, and of all who honour the memory of Bacon, for those whose ready attention to the request thus made to them has placed us in possession of these papers ; and I may be allowed to mention that, although my application, being based upon a copy of an originally imperfect catalogue, only referred to a single letter, M. Wegener did not content himself with a mere literal fulfilment of the request made to him, but at once sent copies of every letter of Bacon's preserved in the Archives.

It will be in the recollection of the Society that on the appearance of the first volume of the “History of Caesar ” by the Emperor Napoleon, the Council took occasion to express to His Imperial Majesty their high esteem for the learning and ability and the power of antiquarian investigation which that work displays. The wish, which at the same time they took the liberty of stating, that we might be allowed the honor of adding His Majesty's name to our list of Fellows, received a gracious response, and we have now, as you are aware, the great gratification to see the Sovereign of France enrolled among us as a Royal Fellow.