the various details hitherto given of the county's vetusta monumenta. Such an undertaking—and, with many, such a labour of love-allotted in parochial or other portions, is truly a legitimate aim for County Associations; and, by similar means, County Histories will become, as they ought, more and more useful and trustworthy in reference. Moreover, while these matters are under attention, strides will necessarily be made towards the desirable end of compiling an archæological map of the county, showing the sites of the tumuli, monoliths, roads, passes, encampments, and relics of every description, whether pre-historic, British, Roman, Saxon, Danish, or Norman-which, to use Bacon's expression, "have casually escaped the shipwreck of Time;" and this is rendered the easier, inasmuch as our excellent Ordnance maps afford a correct basis.

It was my intention to have appended a few of my own "experiences" in this line, with respect to the readiest methods of making rubbings, and obtaining fac-similia in cases of difficulty; but, recollecting that the active Mr. John Williams, of Somerset House, is perhaps the most practised hand in England in that particular department, as well as in taking exquisite casts of gems and coins, I requested him to favour me with information regarding his process. In an immediate reply, this gentleman has very openly related his management, the which is so likely to prove useful to the antiquarian Tyro that I take the liberty of subjoining a copious extract. I beg to remain, my dear Sir,

The Rev. Charles Lowndes, F.R.A.S. Hon. Sec.

Yours faithfully,

W. H. SMYTH.

Extract of the Letter from Mr. Williams:

Somerset House, Sept. 19, 1858.

According to your desire I send you an account of my method of copying inscriptions on stone or brass with facility and perfect accuracy. I was led to its adoption by the following circumstances :-In the year 1832 I was engaged in the study of the Egyptian Hieroglyphics; and, finding I could not depend upon the accuracy of printed or engraved copies of Egyptian monuments, I endeavoured to find out some method by which I might be able to copy mechanically, with rapidity and at the same time with perfect accuracy, such inscriptions as might be required. The result was the adoption of the method I am about to describe, and I may add that, during that and the four succeeding years I successfully copied the inscriptions on nearly the whole of the monuments then in the British Museum. I also copied those in the museum of Sir John Soane, including the celebrated Belzoni Sarcophagus, together with those in the possession of Dr. Lee, and in the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford, with many others in different private collections. These inscriptions, all of course the exact size of the originals, now occupy four large volumes, and were taken from some hundreds of monuments.

The following is the method which he adopted:

A paper blackened on one side is prepared as follows:-Take a small portion of yellow soap, say about the size of a nut, rub it up carefully with water until it becomes of the consistency of thick paste, without lumps of any kind to this add a sufficient quantity of black lead in powder; mix these intimately, adding a few drops of water, if necessary, to keep it of the consistency I have already mentioned, viz., that of thick paste. Spread this on the surface of paper of any kind, and scrape off as much as possible of the superfluous

colouring matter. Suffer it to dry, and now again scrape the surface so as to remove all the composition that might come off in patches in the succeeding manipulation, the object being to leave on the paper an exceedingly thin film of black lead spread as evenly as possible over it; this when laid with the blackened side on white paper will leave a trace even by merely passing the finger nail over it.

This is the copying paper. In addition to which a piece of wood must be provided about six inches long, half an inch thick, and of about the same width; the end of this should be hollowed out so as to leave an edge projecting a little, shaped, in short, like this figure. The edge of the rubber can be applied readily to the paper, and is essential to the production of a good copy.

The paper I employed in making my copies was of the sort known to stationers as "double crown." This is a thin white paper of considerable size, and answers better than a thicker paper, as the structure of the latter frequently prevents the taking of many of the finer lines.

In order to copy an inscription with these materials we must first fix, by means of a little paste (shoemakers' stiff paste is the best) one of the sheets of double crown over the object to be copied; applying the paste at each corner of the sheet of paper will be found quite sufficient, as it is merely required to keep the paper in its place. Lay upon this a piece of the prepared paper with the blackened side downwards, and rub it on the back with the edge of the piece of wood. The black comes off readily, and covers all the prominent parts, while the inscription and other sunken parts remain white. The flexibility of the paper enables it to be applied in all directions, and consequently the copy can be made as sharp as possible; any parts that are imperfect can easily be retouched; and, as the blackened paper is not permanently fixed in any way, the progress of the work can be ascertained readily. When finished the copy is easily detached, and, if necessary, the traces of the paste used in fixing it can soon be removed with a wet sponge. The time occupied in copying an object is very short.

I may also add that, by using a lithographic compound for blackening the paper and transfer-paper for the copy, I was enabled to remove it to a lithographic stone, and thus multiply the copies ad infinitum.

***In order to spare certain feelings in this vicinity, I have forborne to instance the discreditable and rapid destruction of Quarendon Chapel and its interesting marbles (see Edes Hartwelliana, page 62): a spoliation which cannot be imputed to railroads, or other improvements.

66

Time was when the antiquary had mostly to complain of the whitewash besmearings of doing-up" churchwardens, but latterly they have taken to doing away. In 1852 my worthy correspondent Mr. Benjamin Williams, F.S.A. was so struck with the beauty of the sculptures on the tympanum of the south door of Tetsworth Church, that he made a drawing of it, the engraving

from which appears in the Archæologia (vol. XXX. page 487), under date 14th of February, 1853. To this communication is appended a note-" Since this letter was written the church has been taken down, and this very ancient and interesting sculpture has been unfortunately destroyed.” Tetsworth is a rural village in Oxfordshire, but on the borders of this county. It gives its name to a marly mould mentioned ante, at pages 42-3. W. H. S.

§3. CERTAIN RELICS FOUND NEAR AYLESBURY. WITH
FURTHER REMARKS ON RUBBINGS.

MY DEAR SIR,

St. John's Lodge, 12-5-'59.

From your having drawn my attention to the vestigia discovered in this neighbourhood during the autumn of last year, I repaired to the site, which is on a farm tenanted by Mr. Edward Terry. By this, and an examination of the relics, I am able to state the following particulars; and, however scant they may be, I hope they will be found accurate, since they may therefore form a link in the chain of evidence which research has procured, or may yet procure, respecting the ancient occupation of this vicinity. Besides correcting archaic chorography, such incidents also generally afford a partial insight into the state and condition of those who preceded us, by yielding unequivocal traces of their forts and dwellings, the money circulated among them, the utensils and implements which they used, the weapons they brandished, the remains of the very animals they subsisted upon, and finally their modes of sepulture. It is therefore imperative that every vestige brought to light by design or accident should be duly substantiated and recorded, so that the disjecta membra may hereafter be embodied in a comprehensive whole.

Here I cannot but own to being somewhat perplexed that Aylesbury bears so slight a mention in our historic registers, seeing that according to the old Saxon Chronicle it was one of the strongest holds of the Britons: and it evidently must have been of capital importance, from its dominant position over the Vale to which its name is imparted. Yet successive waves of conquerors have swept over it; for we are encompassed with unmistakeable evidences of protracted occupation by Britons, Romans, Anglo-Saxons, and Danes; the two last of which peoples are well known to have had most ferocious and sanguinary encounters at Halton, Bledlow (Bloodyridge), and other hard-fought battle-fields, wherein indiscriminate massacre or hopeless slavery awaited the vanquished. Even of late years extensive "finds" of coins, pottery, arms, fibulæ, armillæ, beads, tesseræ, and mattoni, have occurred all around; as for instance at Prince's Risborough, Ellesborough, Weston Turville, Mentmore, Little Kimble, Stone, Crendon, and that severely-contested Saxon station Dinton, where tradition points to the sambucus humilis, or Daneswort, as a proof that the soil which nourished it had been drenched and saturated with blood of the Danes.* This spot appears to offer promise to the excavator, but there is little to

* The forays of the Danes were rather marked by rapine and massacre than a desire for settling : yet the adjacent Eythrop, Southrop, Souldrop, and Tythrop would seem, by the Danish terminal, to denote that they occupied those places.

be marked above-ground; in the Vale the boundaries for the greater part may have been formed of hedge-rows and ditches, which, as my late friend Hallam remarked, are among our oldest antiquities; hence the little that offers to eye-search, the very ruins of the stations having disappeared-ipsa periere ruina. But on the adjacent Chiltern Hills there are mounds, barrows, entrenched camps, and fastnesses of various kinds among its once impassible forests, which sufficiently prove the early importance of that fine mountainous range-the very Torres Vedras of the Britons. Of these places of security, perhaps the most interesting is Belinus or Kimble Castle, the reputed residence of the British King Cunobeline-Shakespeare's Cymbeline. This post is finely situated on a strong circular eminence above Velvet Lawn, and there seems no reason for doubting its traditional story. Indubitable certainty may yet reward inquiry; yet I cannot suppress my own chagrin on being told in Ellesborough that a man had recently found a beautiful coin in this castle, when, dreaming of the gold galloping horse and wheel of Cunobeline, I found that it proved-after being very carefully unwrapped from its swathings—to be a trumpery brass Nuremberg Token! To return—

Last autumn, in draining a field called Benhill, situate in the hamlet of Walton, between the two roads to Tring and Wendover, and just beyond the new cemetery, the workmen dug up a quantity of human and other bones, together with a corroded spear-head, and the neck of a terracotta vessel which had been painted black, and resembling the form of one represented in Artis's "Durobrivæ Illustrated " (plate xlvii. fig. 1), which was found at the Roman pottery-kiln, Normangate-field, Castor, in 1826. I was also shown the fragment of what seemed to have been the handle of a coarse amphora, or perhaps of one of the mortuary urns called ossuaria. These remains were found at about three feet deep, in a dark soil bearing an appearance of burning having been practised there,—a circumstance of no great weight in itself, since cremation and inhumation were contemporaneously in use among the Pagan Anglo-Saxons; although there was a difference in the sepultures of the Romans quartered in Britain, and the Romanized population of the island. Such was the "find;" but the space was not disturbed beyond the furrows necessary for drainage, so that the extent of eligible excavatable ground is still unknown. Indeed, after wandering over the whole site, I am not prepared to recommend any particular spot whereon to commence with the pick and the spade, except to continue the previous diggings when the present crop of beans is off the surface.

In examining the "find" in detail, the human bones and teeth were found to be in very fair condition, and indeed some of them perfectly sound: and there were parts of the antlers of two stags, a stag's entire head, some boar's tusks, and other intermingled bones,-most of which were collected and submitted to my inspection by Mr. Field of Aylesbury. No coins, medals, implements, tesseræ, or foundations were discovered in the very limited extent which was opened; but the spear-head above-mentioned offers a clue upon which we may reason pretty positively. Being nearly flat, and no less than eighteen inches in length, it must be considered Danish; that people using spear-blades even longer, insomuch that they were more like swords on shafts than the usual spears. As it is unlike the pilum of the Lower-Empire Romans, the angon of the Franks, the spiculum of the Anglo-Saxons, or the javelin of the Teutonic races in general, it may be accepted as an evidence of having been wielded by a fallen Dane; and it is therefore indicative of a fact and a period.

The name Ben-hill is no doubt derived from the long eminence which commands the valley between it and the Chilterns; Ben having been widely applied to elevated ground. The situation. as a post is excellent, looking over the town of Aylesbury to the N.W., and the village of Weston Turville--where many Roman relics have been found-to the S. E.; and it commands a view of the country immediately surrounding it. Not far below, in the Friarage fields, Roman coins have been repeatedly found; some of which, picked up only last year, were brought here for my inspection: among them a denarius of Balbinus, bearing that emblem of concord, two right hands joined the commissa dextera dextræ-on its reverse, was so perfect as to be worthy of any cabinet. These pieces, however, form a very slight testimony as to the former occupants, for, Roman money having been the currency of the country for upwards of 400 years, it may equally as well have been hidden or lost by the Britons or Saxons, as by the Romans. by the Romans. Herein the ceramic art lends a powerful aid in determining the time and degree of civilization of a people whose history is lost; for fragile pottery has often proved even more durable than brass, thus countenancing Sir Thomas Browne's thoughtful assertion that "Time conferreth a dignity upon everything that resisteth his power." Thus it is to the plastic vases of the Etruscans and Greeks that chronology, art, and history are so deeply indebted; and the specimens found about herealthough inferior in antiquity and art-cannot but be very useful to inquiry, From what has already been exhumed it is clear that the use of pottery continued among the Romanized Britons and Anglo-Saxons after the departure of the Romans: but instead of the usual red lustrous wares of the latter, the domestic utensils of the former are rather inelegant, exhibiting no great marks of much preparation before use; being generally made of coarse clays impressed more or less with mere zig-zag lines. Still, occasionally, better fictile productions of the Romans are turned up in the neighbourhood, as, for instance, among the relics exhumed at Weston Turville in 1855, two pateræ and a caliculus were found of the red so-called Samian ware; both the glaze and paste or body of the material, however, render it doubtful whether they were fabricated in England. After all, Saxon art can only be rated as degraded Roman.*

Except in cases like the present, wherein every incident ought to be brought forward, I should hardly have mentioned, that among the bones found at Benhill were several specimens of the little fossil nautilus, of the Foraminifera kind approaching to the nummulite. Of these Mr. Field has preserved a good specimen. Snail shells are often found in such deposits.

On the whole the "find" offers as yet very little to reason upon; but still from this accidental discovery a probable conclusion may be arrived at, namely, that the hill was once the site of an encampment, very likely Anglo-Saxon; that outside this camp an engagement with the Danes had taken place, after which the slain men and horses were buried in the trenches where they fell; and that the bones of the deer, boars, and other ruminant creatures, indicate the pagan sacrificial death-meals-in which even horse-flesh bore a part. Hence the quantity of edible

* Two or three commonly-called lachrymatories, or tear-bottles, have been brought to me, with the popular error respecting them, and which supposition I elsewhere sought to demolish with a coup-de-plume : they are fictile vessels which probably held unguents and perfumes; but could not, from the flatness of lip, have been intended to be applied to the eyes, as receptacles for the tears shed at funerals.