and its objects arranged in genera and species.' There is an obvious resemblance between those oldest and most deeply-seated portions of our earth, the records of whose construction are laboriously evolved and with difficulty interpreted, and that remotest period of a nation's growth of which we have no history but in fragmentary memorials. Such an age had England, and in such memorials her soil is affluent. The foot of advancing civilization is continually striking against the shattered remains of successively extinguished economies. It is an anticipated triumph of the future to reconstruct this farthest past. It is a present desideratum that our reading classes should know at least as much of what is to be known respecting the London of the Romans and Saxons, as of Nineveh and Pompeii. That desideratum Mr. Wright has gone far to supply, as we shall best show by a resumé of his very interesting and instructive volume.

Our author's ethnological views are those now generally adopted, and may be compressed into a single sentence-that the Celts were an earlier migration than the Germans, and came from the south-east; that they were driven west and south-west by the Germans, who, entering Europe from the shores of the Black Sea, advanced through its central parts; that the Germans themselves were in turn urged on by the Sclavonic, or Sarmatian race, which, as early as five centuries before Christ, had established itself on the eastern borders of Europe; and that the Celts would probably have been crushed by the Germans, but for the interposition of Roman strength, imposing a yoke upon the one and presenting a barrier to the other.

It

Presuming on the reader's familiarity with the picture of Britain left us by Cæsar and Tacitus, and with the order of events from the arrival to the departure of the Romans, we confine ourselves to the archæological illustration of the people and period. Our well-informed and faithful guide into this subterranean world, warns us at the threshold that he has comparatively little to show. The monuments of the British period,' says Mr. Wright, are few and uncertain, on account of the difficulty of appropriating them in a satisfactory manner. has been the custom to consider all articles of rude make, which appeared not to be Roman, as belonging to a period antecedent to the Roman invasion; but later experience and more careful investigation have shown that this view was altogether erroneous. Much which used to be called British is now known to be Saxon, and it is impossible to say how much of the rest belongs to the period of the Roman occupation.' It is a saddening, if not a humiliating fact, that the sepulchre is the first, the hugest, and the surest of the remains of primeval Britain. The cromlech of the Celt, the tumulus of the Latin, and the barrow of the Saxon, are found in every corner of these islands, and it is within those mansions of the dead that we find our chiefest memorials of the living. The sepulchral monuments of the Britons are distinguished

trated by the ancient remains brought to light by recent researches. By Thomas Wright, Esq., M.A., F.S.R., M.R.S.L., Corresponding Member of the Institute of France. London: Arthur Hall, Virtue, and Co., Paternoster-row.

from those of their successors chiefly by their colossal dimen sions and mystic grandeur. The Roman and the Saxon were content to raise a hollow mound of earth and stones, within which to deposit their dead-but the noble savage' who bestrode the oaken forests of unconquered Albion, set up a circle or a square, frequently a series of circles or squares, of huge stone pillars; placed upon these other stones, roofwise; and covered up the whole with richest earth. The antiquary has been accustomed, on meeting with piles of stones arranged as we have described, to attribute to them a religious character. He has traced in the Titanic columns of Stonehenge and Avebury, a Druid temple, and even fixed the site of the altar on which human sacrifices were bound. But recent researches,' Mr. Wright tells us, have left no doubt that they are all sepulchral chambers denuded of their mounds."

6

'In fact they have been found with their original coverings in the Channel Islands, in Britany, in Ireland, and in England. One instance occurred about the year 1800, at Lanyon, in the parish of Maddern, or Madron, near Penzance, in Cornwall, which has been more carefully recorded than other similiar discoveries in England, and it furnishes us with an example of the motives which have led to the removal of the original mounds. The farmer to whom the ground belonged had often cast a longing eye to what appeared to be an immense heap of rich mould, and at length he resolved to clear it away and spread it over his field. As these large barrows are generally raised in localities where the soil is not very deep, the earth of which they are formed is the more attractive. When they had carried away about a hundred cartloads, the labourers came to a great stone, and not knowing what this might be, they removed the surrounding earth more carefully, and thus brought to light a large cromlech, formed, like many known examples, by three upright stones, making the three sides of the sepulchral chamber, covered with a massive cap-stone. Within were found a heap of broken urns and human bones, but it was evident that it had been disturbed at some former period, probably by treasure-seekers."

In Morvan, West Cornwall, is a cromlech, the top-stone of which is calculated to weigh twenty tons; that of Kits-Cotty-house, between Maidstone and Rochester, is estimated at ten tons and a half. In the Isle of Anglesea is a double cromlech, consisting of a larger and a smaller chamber, the massive capstone of the former resting on five, and originally, it would appear, on seven, upright supports. The most complicated of these structures was opened in 1816, at Stoney Littleton, Somersetshire. The mound was more than a hundred feet long, thirteen high, and fifty-four wide. It was found to contain an entrance porch, a central gallery forty-seven feet long, and three transept chambers on either side. It had evidently been disturbed by ruder hands than those of the antiquary, for in only one of the recesses was found an earthen vessel containing human ashes; while the central 'avenue was strewed with the sacred deposits. The cromlech appears to have been usually surrounded with a foss, or, sometimes, with an outer circle of smaller stones. Of this kind, numerous examples are found in Cornwall, and near the Land's End is one nearly eighty feet in diameter, called Dance Maine. The circle of Arbor-low, which has long been considered as the great Druidical temple of Derbyshire, is now admitted as the terminal syllable, low, would indicate to have

been more probably a sepulchral erection. The extraordinary remains known by the Anglo-Saxon name, Stonehenge,'-incorrectly apostrophised by the poet as,

'Brotherless hermit, the last of thy race!'

was evidently the centre of a very extensive cemetery, though itself no doubt a temple. Still more remarkable, though less known, are the remains at Avebury, about twenty miles from Stonehenge. The stones are no less massive, and the circle much larger, enclosing a whole village, with various fields and buildings, and the approach is by a winding avenue of double pillars, a mile and a half in length. The wonderfully balanced masses called rocking stones,' geologists and antiquaries are now agreed in attributing to the superhuman strength and skill of that impersonal agency we call natural causes.' There is another class of remains no less decidedly British than those we have named, and no less obviously intended for interment, but which do not contain the sepulchral chamber. Numerous mounds have been opened in Wiltshire and Derbyshire, in which the actual place of burial is a shallow grave, and in which the body was placed, sometimes outstretched, sometimes doubled up, and sometimes in a sitting position; or, when only ashes are found, the urn is placed in a variety of positions. These different modes of burial, it seems, do not represent different periods; but were probably adopted according to the caprice or condition of the survivors. Only one other observation remains to be made under this head-namely, that in some of these mounds, interments have evidently been made in two or more successive strata. In the cromlech, we have said, memorials of the living, as well as remains of the dead, are found. Very scanty, however, are the indications thus furnished of the ancient Britons. Either they were a very poor people, or they cared not to lavish their treasures upon the dead. The latter is not likely, since they evidently spared no labour upon the disposition of the corpse. Implements and weapons, chiefly of stone and bronze, a few bodkins and hairpins, and a handful of coins, constitute the sum of our discoveries. Funeral urns and drinking cups, evidently moulded by the hand, of the rudest form, with scarcely an attempt at ornament, and badly baked, are the only specimens we possess of their pottery. Knives, axes, hammers, chisels, saws, and arrow-heads, of stone and flint, appear to have been in general use among them; but they were not unacquainted with working in metal-for articles of iron, copper, and bronze, are found side by side with those of the former material. It is true,' remarks Mr. Wright, commenting on this circumstance, that there may have been a period when society was in so barbarous a state that sticks and stones were the only implements with which men knew how to furnish themselves; but I doubt if the antiquary has yet found any evidence of such a period.' 'Nothing,' he elsewhere observes, 'is more unsafe than the rule that mere rudeness of construction is a proof of antiquity; and he illustrates the observation by the fact, that while swords of tempered iron are found in Roman barrows, weapons made of stone were used at the battle of Hastings, and even in the wars of Edward

and Wallace. Far back as we can go, lighted by the glimmering taper of archæological science, we find traces of social inequalities-of the distinctions of rich and poor, elegant and rude. Side by side with the flint arrow-head of the vassal warrior, we find breastplates of bronze, evidently intended rather to adorn than defend the front of his chief. In one instance, a cuirass of beaten gold has been found; and, for the sake of the local tradition attached, we quote our author's description of the discovery, which was made in 1833, at Mold, in Flintshire:

A mound, composed of pebbles and stones, had long stood at the corner of a field, and it was then cleared away for agricultural purposes. It was found to contain interments of urns and burnt bones, and also, in another part of the mound, a skeleton, round the breast of which was a corset of thin gold, embossed with an ornamentation resembling nail heads and lines. This interesting article is now in the British Museum. This barrow was called by the Welsh peasantry bryn-yr-ellyllon, or the hill of fairies or goblins; and it was believed to be haunted. But the most curious circumstance connected with it was the declaration, made before it was opened, of a woman of the neighbourhood, that, as she was going home late one night and had to pass by it, she saw moving over the barrow, a spectre "clothed in a coat of gold, which shone like the sun."

Of the coins incidentally mentioned it must suffice to add, that they are evident imitations of Greek and subsequently of Roman money and medals; that a large proportion of them are of gold and silver; and that their execution is in general extremely rude.

Of British towns or villages there are no authentic or intelligible remains. The excavations in the midland counties popularly known as such, it is impossible to distinguish from those that indubitably belong to a later period; and it is not unlikely that much of what passes for Roman or Anglo-Saxon remains, are indeed the memorials of a much later and scarce less barbarous age-the sites of fortresses and hamlets which disappeared in the storms let loose over England by the feuds of barons and the wars of the Roses. There is but one class of dwellings which we are sure were occupied by the aboriginal inhabitants of this island down to the age of Constantine-namely, 'caves and holes of the earth.' The geologists have turned up, in the cavernous rocks on the Devonshire and Cornish coasts, and at the opposite extremity of England, in Yorkshire, every article that is indubitably British. The reader of Shakespeare will be reminded that it was in such a savage hole' as this, at Milford Haven, Belarius kept house' with the sons of Cymbeline; and drew a devout homily from its low roof

'Stoop, boys: This gate

Instructs you how to adore the heavens; and bows you
To morning's holy office. The gates of monarchs
Are arched so high, that giants may get through
And keep their impious turbands on, without
Good morrow to the sun.-Hail, thou fair heaven!
We house i' the rock, yet use thee not so hardly
As prouder livers do.'

Let the reader now imagine himself a Roman of the third century, on a visit to the transalpine possessions of his empire city. He will be

desirous to extend his travels to the island of which he had read in the Commentaries' and the Annals'-to observe for himself the people who had produced a Caractacus and a Boadicea. Embarking at Gessoriacum (the modern Boulogne), he will be guided at night by the pharos of Dubræ (Dover) into the port of Rutupiæ (Richborough), behind the citadel of which he will descry the white marble mansions of the town, and the amphitheatre that crowns the hill. Crossing the creek from which were taken oysters that delighted the epicures of Rome, he passes over the site of the present Sandwich, and reaches by a high road over the downs, the city of Durovernum (now Canterbury). Leaving Durovernum to the south-east, he will proceed over the forest of Blee to Durobriva (Rochester). Thence he will journey along the south banks of the Thames-thickly studded to this day with traces of Roman settlements-to Vagniaca (probably Southfleet), over Shooter's-hill and Blackheath to Noviomagus (in the parish of Bromley). Another stage will bring him to the foot of that bridge by which fifteen hundred years ago, as now, he would enter the great commercial town of Londinium.' This city, he will observe, is built on elevated ground, divided by a stream (Wallbrook) that runs down to the Thames, extending westwards to another stream (Holbourne), and on the east to the eminence which has since become classical under the name of Tower Hill. Already, he will see, Londinium has grown considerably since its foundation, and is adorned on the ground sloping from the north-west down to the river with temples and public buildings. The city is intersected, he will remark, by two principal streets -the one running northerly from the bridge (in a line with Bishopsgate-street); the other, from east to west (Watling-street, emerging at Ludgate). Following the latter of these roads, across Holbourne, to the present site of Knightsbridge, our imaginary traveller turns off to the north, and proceeds by the Kilburn-road, through a country already well cultivated and adorned with many villas, to the city of Verulamium (St. Albans); where he may divert himself with the shows of the theatre. Thence, a road nearly straight will conduct him to Durocobriva (near Dunstable)-the market-place, as Verulamium was the fashionable town, of the district. Crossing the rivers Ousel and Avon, he will reach the spot now occupied by High Cross, Leicestershire. His route through Warwickshire and Staffordshire may yet be traced in the tumuli which denote the sites of the towns at which he would rest-and so through Shropshire, even to the majestic heights of Snowdon, and down to Segontium (near Carnarvon), on the coast of the Irish sea. Supposing our traveller to leave Londinium by the north road, emerging from the city at what is now Bishopsgate, his first halting-place would be at the conflux of two streams, the Rib and the Quin; whence the road proceeded to Durolipons (Godmanchester), over a district covered with potteries, to a rich and elegant town named Durobriva (the present village of Castor). Two stages thence would bring him to Lindum (Lincoln), a city whose elegance and elevation would repay, then as now, the dreariness of its approaches. There was, however, another and a much pleasanter road