In my last letter I carried the account of my architectural Tour in the English provinces of France as far as Bordeaux; the following year I made this my starting point, and traversed the length of the ancient province of Guienne, which it is hardly necessary to ohserve is a long and rather narrow strip across the south of France, extending from Bordeaux in the west, nearly to Lyons in the east, leaving Gascony and Languedoc in the south, and other smaller provinces to the north. I have paid no attention to the modern division of the country into departments, it not being material to my purpose; and my rapid passage from one department to another would have caused great confusion in describing my route.

Among some additional MSS., belonging to the Trevelyan family, recently placed in my hands, I find many of especial interest and value in an historical point of view; and, as I know nobody more capable of estimating them than yourself, I have addressed to you the following account of one of the most important. The particulars will be given in greater detail in a volume on the preparation of which I am at present engaged, but it seemed to me that a statement of a few of the most prominent features would be highly acceptable to our Society; and Sir Walter Calverley Trevelyan, who enrolled himself among our Fellows during the last season, has promptly and liberally allowed me so far to anticipate what will appear more at large hereafter.

I am induced to address your Lordship, not so much on account of the general interest you have always taken in antiquarian researches, as presuming that, from your descent from a Chief Justice of the reign of Henry VII., and your possession of his Sergeant's Ring, with the first known instance of a posy inscribed, you will have a special regard to those inquiries which relate to legal history. Your connection also with a Chief Baron of the Exchequer of the last century warrants me more particularly in calling your Lordship's attention to the following observations with reference to the title of an officer of the latter court, which I trust may be worthy of the consideration of our Society.

By the kindness of James More Molyneux, Esquire, of Loseley, I am enabled to lay before the Society of Antiquaries a transcript of another of the Loseley MSS. some of which have already appeared in the eighteenth volume of the Archæologia, and a collection from which was published in 1835 by Mr. A. J. Kempe, a Fellow of this Society. It is an account of the presents received and the expenses incurred at the wedding of the daughter of Mr. (afterwards Sir William) More, of Loseley, in 1567, and will, I think, be found of considerable interest as throwing light on the wedding customs among the landed gentry of that period, the more especially as I am not aware of any similar account having hitherto been published.

The Vase, of which a tracing is laid before the Society, has been described in the Catalogue of the Greek Vases in the Museum, although its subject could not at the time be made out, and the present memoir must be considered as an attempt to interpret its meaning, a task rendered the more difficult as there is not any distinct mention of the subject by the classical writers, and it is one transmitted only by the artists of Greece. It occurs on one of the hundred select vases presented by the late Prince of Canino to Cardinal Fesch, and subsequently ceded by the possessors to the British Museum. The Vase is of the shape called hydria or calpis, ornamented with red figures upon a black background, and its style is that usually known as the commencement of the decadence of the fictile art. It has no inscription, unfortunately, to aid in its decipherment. It was found in the sepulchres of the ancient Vulci.

By the kind permission of Mr. Edward C. Brodie, of Salisbury, I submit to the inspection of the Society a very numerous collection of objects discovered in that city during the progress of excavations for the new sewers. They consist of—1. Knives, of various descriptions; 2. Shears; 3. Spoons; 4. Padlocks; 5. Keys; 6. Weapons; 7. Buckles; 8. Pilgrims' signs; 9. Rings; and some other relics, the uses of which are not easily ascertained.

As long ago as 1797 the Abbé Mann of Brussells, then residing in exile at Prague in Bohemia, communicated to our Society, of which he was a foreign Member, “A short Chronological Account of the Religious Establishments made by English Catholics on the Continent of Europe.” His lists were collected with care and exactness, and in many instances preserved a record of religious Communities in which numerous members of the most eminent Catholic families of England became professed.

In my communication “On some of the Weapons of the Celtic and Teutonic Races” read to the Society some time since, I alluded to the fact of the weapon termed “angon” by Agathias never having been found in any of the numerous graves of the Frank and Anglo-Saxon period explored in France and in this country. The subject was thought not undeserving the attention of an active and observant Fellow of the Society, and accordingly Mr. Wylie on the 20th January, 1853, communicated some remarks on this weapon, which he illustrated by a sketch of a javelin, presumed by him to represent the angon so minutely described by Agathias. This example is preserved in the Museum of Artillery in Paris, and it is represented in Mr. Wylie's remarks in the 35th volume of the Archæologia, p. 51. At the same time Dr. Collingwood Bruce noticed incidentally in his account of the Roman Wall a weapon nearly identical in shape and character with that described and represented by Mr. Wylie.

Much has already been said on the Angon, and after the so full and interesting communication, illustrated by the able pencil of Herr Lindenschmit, with which you favoured us last season on this historic subject, any further comments may appear needless. At the risk of such an imputation, however, I shall beg permission to submit some additional gleanings, made during the past summer, of the attentive consideration of the Society.

In the year 1847 you published in the Archæologia an interesting letter addressed by a Mr. Churchman to Sir Joseph Banks, respecting the tradition of a city named Vineta, which was supposed to have been submerged on the shores of Pomerania. The circumstance that a city of such size, wealth, and commercial importance, as to have been described as “Maxima civitatum Europæ,” should have been not only obliterated from the face of the earth, but almost from the memory of man, gave me an interest in investigating the statements of early authors respecting its history and situation. My researches, however, brought under my notice so much that was either doubtful or contradictory, that I could come to no definite conclusion upon either point, and became content to lay the subject aside till more decisive evidence might chance to fall under my notice.

Mr. Major's paper on the subject of the so-called city of Vineta, lately read before the Society of Antiquaries, together with the interest which I know you to have in the question, afford a sufficient apology for the few lines I now address to you, for communication to the Society.

The recent investigations respecting the Charter of the City of London, and the manner in which it has worked, may seem to give particular interest to a manuscript to which I take the liberty to direct your attention and that of the Fellows of our Society. It is entitled—

“An Exhortation or Rule, set down by Mr. Norton, some time Remembrancer of London, whereby the Lord Mayor of London is to order himself and the City.”

Your recent communication to the Society has drawn their attention to some facts relating to Thomas Norton, which were not known to me when I wrote the Memoir for the Shakespeare Society; and, as it is clearly proved, both by your communication and by documents in the State Paper Office, that the author of the first three acts of our earliest tragedy in blank verse was also the citizen grocer and the active and zealous Member for the City of London in 1571, and again from 1572 to 1582, who was declared to be “a man wise, bold, and eloquent,” and to have addressed the Members “in his accustomed manner of natural eloquence,” it may not be uninteresting to notice some of the State transactions in which Norton was engaged in the years 1581 and 1582, when the renewed movement was made against the Catholics by the Parliament and the Government.

In the twenty-second volume of Archæologia, Mr. A. J. Kempe has given an account of some then recent discoveries, by himself and Mr. Thomas Crofton Croker, near the ancient entrenchment called Cæsar's Camp, at Holwood Hill, Keston, near Bromley, Kent. Those discoveries consisted of the foundation of a circular Roman building, supposed to be a temple or tomb, with a square tomb, and two graves, in one of which was a stone coffin, and from the other a stone coffin had been several years previously removed to Wickham Court.

It is pleasant to refer to the archæological opinions of the last century in England, when antiquarian alchymy could transpose the ornamental beads of the Saxon tomb into “Druid snake-eggs,” and throw a Roman halo round relics it was too impossible to ascribe to the Celts. Nor were matters better in France. Every sepulchral discovery was classed as Gaulish, or Gallo-Roman; and even Montfaucon could assume the ponderous belt-buckle of a Merovingian warrior to belong to female head-gear. At this time, indeed, the Saxon and Frankish periods seem to have been altogether ignored; but archæology has at length cast off such erring traditions.

In the month of September, 1827, the late Professor Rosellini, and the present highly talented director of the Belle Arti in the Uffizi at Florence, Professor Migliarini, were commanded by the Grand Duke of Tuscany to unroll a mummy which had been in the collection of the “Gabinetto di Fisica e Storia Naturale ” since the year 1824. This was done in the presence of a large number of spectators, and a very detailed account drawn up of it and drawings made on a large scale by Prof. Migliarini for His Royal Highness. As no notice of this interesting operation has been given to the world, the following details, taken from Prof. Migliarini's private notes, may not be unacceptable, in order that the peculiarities here exhibited may be compared with those observed in other mummies already unwrapped, or which may be hereafter brought to light.

On the 30th June last, at the invitation of the Council of the Surrey Archæological Society, I assisted at the opening of a Barrow at Teddington, near Kingston-on-Thames, but north of the river, and therefore in the county of Middlesex.

During the fall of last year I visited the ancient city of Bath, and was astonished at the quality and extent of the sculptures and inscriptions now preserved in the Literary Institution. They are collected in a vestibule attached to that building, which has a portico of very pure Greek Doric architecture, and the sculptures are effectively arranged, with the advantage of a central light from above. All the sculptures in this vestibule have a particular local interest, as they were discovered within the precincts of the city, most of them about the year 1790, upon what appears to have been the site of an ancient temple, or, more probably, a group of buildings.

“There has been a find of about 215 silver pennies, also four rings set with gems, a ring twisted like a wreath, a ring with crosses on it, and a gimmal ring (at least one with a hand like a gimmal ring), and a brooch double-wreathed, with a tongue something like what I saw when young in peasants' shirts, to keep the two parts together at the breast.

I have the honour to forward for the consideration of the Society of Antiquaries a Drawing of the Tessellated Pavement recently found between Bishopsgate Street and Broad Street, under the vaults of the south-eastern area of the late Excise Office. A small plan which accompanies the drawing (Pl. XVIII.), will show the exact position of the pavement itself, relatively to the adjoining street and to the buildings of the Excise Office. It is a commonly received opinion, that the late Government edifice occupied the site of the house and premises of Sir Thomas Gresham only; and it may be therefore convenient to explain that subsequently to the purchase by the Government from the trustees of Sir Thomas Gresham of the buildings of Gresham College, in 1768, they bought an inn adjoining southward, called the Sun; and these two premises together constituted the area of the late Excise Office. I cannot exactly define the boundary of the two properties, but I have no doubt that the site of this pavement was under the Sun inn portion of it, and did not form any part of the land purchased of the Gresham trustees. In removing the Excise Offices we began from Threadneedle Street, and in taking up the foundations of the main buildings, nothing of any interest was found; but, as we proceeded towards Bishopsgate Street, it was evident that we were approaching foundations and remains that were of a much earlier construction.