I have the honour to lay before the Society some elegant Roman Penates in bronze, which were discovered last July in digging a cellar under the house of Mr. Upham, situated in the High street at Exeter, at the corner of Broad-gate, which leads from that street to the Close of the Cathedral Church. They were found within a very narrow space, and not more than three or four feet below the present pavement of the street.

I did myself the honor, some time ago, to submit to the judgment of this most respectable Society the result of my antiquarian researches in Monmouthshire. It has since been an agreeable surprize to me, to find the same subject treated by the Reverend Mr. William Harris, in his observations on the Julia Strata, and other Roman remains in South Wales, inserted in the second volume of the Archaeologla since this Gentleman's observations seem to confirm the principles, which I ventured to adopt in regard to the Romans in Wales, by additional proofs, not only respecting Monmouthshire and Brecknockshire, but with regard also to the other neighbouring Welsh counties. As the perusal of Mr. Harris's Paper has given me occasion to make some particular remarks, I think proper to communicate them to the Society, as a supplement to my former Essays, and a further illustration of this curious subject. I shall also add such antiquarian observations as I was able to make in my tour through the neighbouring county of Glamorgan.

Your acknowledged skill in the languages of the ancient inhabitants of this island, has induced me to lay before you a Saxon monument of great antiquity, yet remaining in a church in Yorkshire; and it will make me happy if the interpretation of the inscription meets with your approbation.

The curious particulars which you had heard of, and had communicated to me, respecting the great pensile-Rock at West Hoadley, in Sussex, (called by the people Great upon Little), raised my curiosity, and determined me at a leisure day to make an excursion to view and examine it.

The abbey of Benedictine monks at Reading, founded in the year 1121 by Henry the First, rendered still more famous by his and the empress Maud's burial there, was second to few in this kingdom in its wealth, honours, and magnificence. The number of its religious was two hundred; and their abbot, who was a peer of parliament, gave place only to those of Glastonbury and Saint Albans. His abbey answered in stateliness to the rank and consequence he possessed; and a proof of that is, that parliaments and councils have more than once been held in the great hall of the abbey. The shattered and disjointed ruins of the building, which now remain, bear a character of majesty very singular and almost peculiar to themselves. Stript by destroyers of more than ordinary patience and industry, of almost every stone which cased the walls, they still, though built only of small flints, defy the injuries of time and weather, and have more the appearance of rocks than of the works of human hands. My residence in the neighbourhood has given me frequent opportunities of examining these ruins, and the plan and drawings now presented to the inspection of the Society are the result of my enquiries. I make no apology for this communication; it has long appeared to me, that a number of surveys of the different abbies and cathedrals of this kingdom would be a fund of valuable information for those who study the history of architecture in England

The subject of our present enquiry is a passage in the 36th book of Pliny, relating to the celebrated Temple of Diana at Ephesus: it is very concise, but so comprehensive as to have engaged the attention of many learned commentators: who in their various explanations agree in little more than in considering the text, taken as it usually stands, as genuine and uncorrupted; no verbal correction therefore can readily be admitted.

Among the several writers who have exercised their talents on that inexhaustible fund of criticism the works of Shakespeare, Dr. Farmer in his Essay on his learning confessedly stands foremost. My present business to you, Sir, and the Society, is to point out a mistake of his, and some other commentators, on the following French passage in Henry V. act 4. “Est-il impossible d'eschapper la force de ton Bras?” Pistol. “Brass, cur, thou damned and luxurious mountain goat, offer'st me Brass?” Whether this came from the pen of Shakespeare or no, as it is not in the quarto of 1608 in my possession, is foreign to the present purpose, but seems to evince that it was then so pronounced, as it would now be by an Englishman totally unacquainted with the French mode of pronunciation. The assonance was undoubtedly in this instance as in what follows: French soldier. “O pardonnez moy.” Pistol. “Sayst thou me so; is that a ton of moys?” Mr. Johnson makes a doubt, says Dr. Farmer [a], whether the pronunciation of the French language may not be changed since Shakespeare's time : but his does not appear to be the case, at least in this termination.

Though I esteem it to be criminal in some degree to be dropping false hints and suggestions about any matters that may materially affect the public, or raising groundless fears and apprehensions concerning the plague, or war, or any other the like alarming subjects; yet I doubt I shall be but too well justified in declaring, that at this juncture we appear to be in imminent danger of having the pestilence imported into this island. It now rages violently at Constantinople, in the Levant, and in Africa; insomuch that all the neighbouring nations, as we learn from the public prints, are taking all necessary precautions against it; and administration here at home have thought proper to double the quarantine.

I had some time ago the honor of communicating to our Society some remarks of Mr. Anderson on antiquities remaining in the north of Scotland. The Society has judged them worthy of a place in their late publication [a]. I persuade myself therefore I shall be rendering an acceptable service to the Society in communicating to them some farther remarks of the same very ingenious gentleman on the same subject, and which I have now the honor of inclosing to you.

I send herewith a drawing of what is supposed to have been a vitrified fort on the S. W. end of the island of Bute, and which still goes by the name of Dunagoyle. I am obliged for this elegant and accurate plan to Sir David Dalrymple, one of the lords of Session, who was so good as to transmit at the same time one of the vitrified stones, of which parts of the wall were composed.

There is no task more painful than to contradict the assertions of learned and ingenious men; yet, as the detection of error is at least as necessary to the advancement of knowledge as the investigation of truth, I hope I shall stand excused to this Society for the reasons which I now mean to offer for my dissent from the learned Drake, with regard to the Roman antiquities supposed by him to be now existing at York. The first of which I mean to speak is the tower and wall of the Mint Yard, spoken of in high terms by Dr. Lister, and engraven in the Eboracum. This I carefully viewed, but could not see the least difference either in material or construction from the rest of the city walls; except the courses of Roman brick mentioned to bond the work in two places. But I am far from looking on such courses as a certain mark of Roman work, the ingenious Mr. Essex having fully proved brick to have been made by our Saxon ancestors, and I myself having seen four courses of thin and fine brick ranging round the keep of Chepstow castle about twelve feet above ground; nobody will, I believe, attempt to ascribe the last mentioned building to the Roman times.

By the favor of Daniel Braithwaite, Esq. a gentleman who lives in the city, I lay before you and your Society several pieces of Terra-cotta brought from the Musquito shore about the year 1775 [a].

They were sent by a very intelligent gentleman who had long resided in that country, and gave the following account of them.

Stanton Moor is twenty-four miles from Derby, twelve from Chesterfield, and four from Bakewell, a wild uncultivated waste, very high land, rocky, and produces a coarse kind of sedgey grass; it is about two miles in length from north to south, and near one and a half in breadth from east to west; bounded on the north by Rowsley, on the east by Darleydale, a beautiful valley, finely diversified with woods, villages, and rich pasture, and where the Derwent forms a meandering course from north to south; it is bounded on the west by Hartle Liberty or Hartle Moor.

I am much obliged to you for the perusal of the inclosed beautiful and curious charter, which afforded me much pleasure and information; it containing the grant of an office, “ministerium meum de esnecca mea,” which had never before occurred to my observation.

Relying by our constitution upon the freedom of discussing subjects of antiquity with decency, and on the candour of Governor Pownall, I beg leave to offer some remarks upon his memoire on the Roman Earthen Ware, printed in the fifth volume of the Archaeologia, p. 282.

From an attentive perusal of a paper relating to the earthen ware abovementioned, and which was published in the last volume of the Archaeologla [a], it appears to have been the idea of the gentleman who delivered in that paper to our Society, that there had been a Roman pottery established near about the spot where so many earthen vessels, and fragments of vessels, are now from time to time dragged up by the fishermen of Whitstable, on a place which they have, in consequence of their discoveries, called the Pudding-Pan Sand, or Rock, situate, as I have always understood, between two and three miles from the shore.

Invenit nuper doctissimus et rerum numismaticarum peritissimus, Carolus Combe, S. R. et S. A.S. in gazophylacio praestantissimo celeberrimi Guilielmi Hunteri, M. D. S. R. et S. A. necnon Societatis Regiae Scientiarum Parisien. focii, nummos, quales in Europa nondum vidimus, Palmyrenos, cujus characteres cum alphabeto Palmyreno contulit, et cum eo convenire deprehendit. Apparet in his nummis caput barbatum ad sinistram, cui tres literae a dextra et quatuor a sinistra parte adjectae sunt. Primam literam Γ jod esse doctissimus Combeus recte asserit. Licet enim in alphabeto Palmyreno [Philosoph. Transact. vol. XLVIII pag. 693.] paulo aliter scribatur: attamen in ipsis inscriptionibus Palmyrenis aliquoties eandem habet formam, quae in hoc nummo conspicitur.

Since my last, I have received from an ingenious friend the following inscription, made use of in building the Benedictines church at Taloire (an inconsiderable village, half a league from Annecy, a town upon the lake of Annecy) which he observes not to be published with due exactness by Gruter.

Returning in December 1780 from viewing antiquities in the neighbourhood of the Morbiban, late the Mare conclusum of Cæsar, I took in my way the town of Ploemmel, famous in the history of the province for having been the seat of the foreign dukes, when Britanny maintained its independance.

The beginning of day amongst the ancient Greeks and Romans (meaning by a day the νυχθήμεϱον or the space of twenty-four hours accomplished by a single revolution of the sun, to speak vulgarly) seems to be very clearly understood and determined, and is of great use and importance in regard to the innumerable passages of their authors.