When I engaged myself to some friends to vindicate Pliny in relation to the description of the Temple of Diana at Ephesus, I was not aware how many ingenious writers had discussed the same subject. Having, however, been lately favoured by a learned and noble friend with the Memoirs of the Academy of Cortona, I have read the Marchese de Poleni's curious and instructive paper on this subject, and have also considered Mr. Windham's description of that structure which is published in the sixth volume of the Archæologia. I owe much to these learned persons, but am not discouraged from attempting a farther explanation of the text of Pliny, who, though he may have been sometimes mistaken in Natural History, has illustrated the fine arts with the greatest attention, and the most correct taste. The passage I shall first refer to is that in Book xxxvi, chap. 14.

If after the publication of a volume of royal household establishments, the Society can be supposed to give any attention to a detail of the property and expences of a wealthy merchant in the fixteenth century, I must beg that your lordship will do me the honour to lay before them some extracts from the household-book of Thomas Cony, of Bassingthorpe, in the county of Lincoln, Esq. merchant of the staple of Calais, and merchant adventurer of England.

Accidentally looking into a Latin essay of Passeri, on a bronze figure of a boy, inscribed on one arm with Etruscan letters, deposited by Pope Clement XIV. in the Vatican Museum, I met with a figure, represented p. xiv. from the author's own collection, which bears so striking an analogy to the figure of Esculapius, engraved in the ninth volume of Archæologia, p. 109, that I cannot forbear communicating it to the Society.

In travelling some time ago from this place to London, I turned a few miles out of my way to see Kits Coity House. If you should think the observations I made upon the spot, and the thoughts that have occurred to me since, may be acceptable, I beg leave, by your means, to communicate them to our Society.

Some time ago I met with one of the oldest symbols of antient investiture perhaps now to be met with in Scotland. It is a small silver sword, which has long been preserved in the family of Lany, and which, afterwards by a marriage, came into the family of Buchanan of Arnprior. Upon the forfeiture of that family, for engaging in the rebellion of 1745, this sword being found in their charter-chest was lodged in the Court of Exchequer, along with the papers of the family, and a few years since, was, together with the estates, restored. When I was in Edinburgh, in the year 1789, with my late friend the learned Francis Grose, Esq. Antony, Barclay, Esq. writer to the signet, did me the favour to allow Capt. Grose to make a drawing of the remains of the little silver sword with which Culenus, king of Scotland, who succeeded to the throne about the year 965, invested Gillespic Moir with this estate, of which Alexander II. King of Scotland, in 1227, granted a charter of confirmation, narrating the foregoing circumstance, which still exists in the archives of the family of Buchanan of Arnprior; and of which I here give a copy.

The drawing that accompanies this was purchased by me at the late Dr. Lort's sale, and represents a bas releif on white marble, found by Mr. Milles, a builder, among the ruins of a house at Islington. The date of this discovery is not mentioned, nor when it was fixed up in the front of a warehouse in High Timber-street, near Labour-in-vain-hill. But it must have been at least twenty years ago, as I recollect to have heard of it from our late treasurer Mr. Colebrook, who died 1775. I sought for it without success, so long ago, and having repeated my inquiries after it since I became possesed of the drawing, I had the mortification to find that the house wherein it was fixed had been re-built, and no intelligence was to be obtained of the figure.

The various opportunities which antiquity gives the genealogist to compliment greatness at the expence of veracity are so obvious, that particular instances to prove the assertion cannot be necessary. The genealogic tree seldom bears any fruit on its branches but such as are fair to the eye of Pride, and pleasant to the palate of Greatness. The arcana of remote times are not protruded upon the view, when they are calculated to give an humble lesson to the pride of ancestry; and, were this not the case, the researches of the antiquary would not in all instances be able, with certainty, to trace a pedigree up to the original founders of families, whose first emersion from obscurity to riches or renown lies hidden by the dust of antiquity, which has been collecting for ages; were it his intention, that truth should predominate, although at the expence of vanity.

The antiquities from which the inclosed drawings were taken have been all (except No. 23) found at Castlesteads or Cambeck fort. A few of them were discovered some time ago, but the greater part only last year, when the remains of the fort, as well as of the wall of Severus, for a considerable length, were dug up.

In your British Topography, vol. I. p. 607, you have mentioned a tract relative to the burning of St. Paul's steeple, June 4, 1561, printed by Seres in 1563. By the title page it should seem to be an addition to a former tract published by Seres; and in a volume of black-letter tracts, 12mo, which my friend Mr. Latham not long since picked up, there is, as I apprehend, the book alluded to. Imagining from your silence that you may not have seen it, and it being very short, I have transmitted a copy of it. Mr. Herbert, the Continuator of Typographical Antiquities, to whom the tract has been shewn, had never met with it; but he is inclined to think that all the material circumstances have been inserted in our chronicles. Whether he is right in his conjecture, no person is more competent to determine than yourself. As far as I can recollect there are incidents of which I was not before apprized.

In 1789, passing through a town iu Lombardy, I accidentally heard a piper, surrounded by a crowd, execute an air so affecting, that I got out of my chaise to hear him; but judge my surprise when I found, that the instrument he was playing on was perfectly similar to the fistula the Satyrs and Fauns are pictured with. The piper had a little basket of the same sort of instruments to sell, one of which I bought, and on enquiry I found that it is common with the peasantry in that country; I doubt, therefore, whether it will have that merit of novelty with you that it had with me; but if it should happen that you have not seen one of the kind before, I may congratulate myself from the light your fine taste and erudition have constantly thrown on every thing relative to the antients, that I have put it in the best possible train of investigation. On my arrival at Milan, I mentioned the circumstance to a gentleman, who procured me the hearing a concert on it, accompanied by a violin and guittar, that quite enchanted me.

Not finding any person that has attempted to explain the use of several antiquities discovered in Cornwall in 1774, which were exhibited before the Society of Antiquaries in 1788, and engraved in pl. viii. of vol.IX. p. 187: I have lately borrowed them, and trouble you, Sir, with some observations on the plate.

I Beg leave to lay before the Society a curious illuminated letter of filiation from Thomas, brother of the Grey Friers, or Friers Minors, in England, to John Marshall, and Isabel his wife. It bears date I Edw. IV. The following is a copy of the original now exhibited.

However little adapted to the views of the Society a tailor's bill may at first appear, perhaps on a second consideration, it may not be thought quite improper for their notice.

On the Restoration of king Charles the Second, William Legg, Esq. was restored to the office of Master of the Armories, in the Tower of London, Greenwich, and elsewhere, from which he had been outed in the late distractions. Previous to his entering on the said office, he requested a survey to be made of what remained in the armoury; and thereupon a commission, dated August 2d, in the twelfth year of his Majesty's reign, 1660, was directed to Sir John Robinson, Lieutenant of the Tower of London, Colonel William Asheburnham, Sir Thomas Armestronge, knight, John Wood, and Bartholomew Beale, Auditors of the Imprests, to take the remaynes of all the armes, tooles, and other utensills, in the Tower of London, and magazines and storehouses at Greenwich.

The antiquities here delineated were found in a moss about a mile from Friers Carse, in summer 1790, by the workmen forming the turnpike road from Dumfries to Sanquhar. They consisted of two vessels very like modern saucepans, and the one was within the other, and fitted it most exactly. They are brass, tinned in the inside, and very neatly made. The one now entire, will hold near a quart, and the bottom is raised in circular ornaments exactly like the bottom of the broken one, which is delineated here. The outer one was broken through the stupidity of those who found them, but the inner one is intire; on its handle is in Roman capitals what I imagine to be the maker's name.

Allow me, in return for the great pleasure your excellent account of English fonts in the tenth volume of the Archæologia afforded me, to present you with drawings of some Scottish fonts, in my small collection of antiquities at Friers Carse. If you think them worthy the attention of the Society of Antiquaries, they are at your disposal as you see proper. At the time of the Reformation in Scotland the mob demolished their sacred basons, by breaking and mutilating them, with a barbarous and bigoted zeal, so that few of them now are to be met with, and those much defaced. I have collected specimens of all the varieties I have seen; octangular, circular, square, oblong, and four-sided ones. The first is Morion font.

In your copious description and illustration of fonts, inserted in the tenth volume of Archaeologia, N° XXIV. at note t, p. 201, you have suggested, that Mr. Gostling seems to have given up his conjecture that the dome on the North side of Canterbury cathedral, and placed opposite to the entrance into the East cross aile, was a baptistery; and that I think the edifice was a lavatory. Concerning both these points it is my intention to trouble you with some observations, and to add miscellaneous remarks on fonts in this country, which you will be pleased to transmit to our brethren in Somerset Place, should you deem the paper worthy of their attention.

Since I transmitted my miscellaneous observations on fonts, I have been favoured with a letter from Mr. Clarke, in which there are some passages so pertinent to the subject, as to make it advisable for me to communicate them to the Society. He is the gentleman very conversant in ancient rituals, whom I mentioned as having acquainted me that the same vase for Holy water was sometimes called Fons; and as before he had apprized me of this circumstance, I could only by implication collect from conslitutions provincial and synodical that this was one meaning of that word, I desired him to let me know where he had met with this use of it. Having likewise noticed in a paper written by him, and inserted in the Gentleman's Magazine, vol. LVII. p. 661, that fonts were to be surrounded with a lattice; I expressed a wish to learn his authority, no such direction occurring in the conslitution of archbishop Edmund, which he had just before cited.

An Englishman can hardly be supposed to want curiosity in whatever relates to naval architecture. To the present slate of it in his own country he owes all its present importance. In itself, it displays the highest exertions of human skill and science; in its consequences, the most beneficial advantages to every other Society as well as his own, and unites mankind in one general participation of the benefits peculiar to every distant part of the world. It is therefore hoped that the present attempt, imperfect as it is, will be received with indulgence; and perhaps excite some abler pen, guided by more ample materials, to do justice to the subject.