There is scarcely a district in the world endowed with such singular beauty, and possessing such deep points of interest, as that extending about ten or twelve miles westward from Naples. A sky of such brilliancy as only Italy can shew; a sea of colours like the transparent hues of the sapphire and emerald; mountains on land and mountainous islands rising from the sea twice and thrice the height of those in Wales, and crowned with snow for a third of the year. The air of extraordinary clearness and purity, and redolent with the odours of the myrtle, orange, and citron. The earth covered with rich crops of maize, the vine hanging in a cordage of festoons from tree to tree, huge groves of figs and olives twisted in every fantastic form, and interspersed with the feathery palm, forests of pine, leccio, and cypress, all form a scene of beauty difficult to describe. But how is the interest heightened when we reflect on the history of the spot! We are in the scene so exquisitely described by Virgil in the Æneid. Here are the Isles of the Sirens and of Circe, the Tomb of Misenus, the Grotto of the Sibyl, the mysterious River Cocytus, the Lake Avernus, and the Elysian Fields. Here, too, the great poet is supposed to have been interred. The heights are crowned with the remains of sumptuous villas, where Caesar, Crassus, Pompey, Lucullus, and Augustus feasted, and where Cicero penned his best philosophical works.

I have great pleasure in furnishing you with some remarks on the four Deeds, with seals, of the time of Henry VI., which you propose to lay before the Society, and also with a brief memoir of Sir William Oldhalle, whose seals are appended to those documents. A subject, that has interested me so much, may not be without interest to others.

The communication which I desire to make to the Society on the present occasion will be found to be in some respects peculiarly unsatisfactory. It is a tale of an interesting manuscript, imperfect; of inquiries respecting it, unavailing; of researches, baffled on every hand; and now of an ultimate appeal to this Society, in the hope that some Member may supply the deficiencies which I have not been able to remove.

In a communication by Mr. Stone, read to the Society of Antiquaries in the last session, the writer alluded to the appearance of a number of circles, heretofore looked upon by the country people as “Fairy Rings,” which had been observed by him among the corn. As the summer advanced, additional circles became visible, and finally the number which could be distinctly traced amounted to thirteen.

That excellent scholar the lamented Kemble has pointed out the correspondence which exists between the mortuary urns of our ancestors, the borderers on the Elbe and the Eider, and many of our own. The same correspondence may be expected to be found in the institutions we have in common, and I now beg to submit to the Society of Antiquaries some account of probably the most striking example of the old Mark Confederation, the foundation of our elective institutions. In the republican community of Ditmarsh—which existed till the promulgation of the new Danish Code of Laws in 1554—we may see the germ of our power of self-government and of our jury system. Their system of house-marks was certainly once in use amongst our own yeomen, although now nearly obsolete; a system which throws, I think, considerable light on the papers on the Hide of Land and certain Manorial Customs, which, through your encouragement, I submitted to the Society, and which are printed in Volumes XXXIII. and XXXV. of the Archæologia.

While engaged in my recent perambulation of the forest of Wychwood, I paid a visit to Stanlake, near Witney, the scene of Mr. Stone's researches, communicated by that gentleman to the Society in the last session. On that occasion Mr. Stone informed me of the discovery of Anglo-Saxon remains in the adjoining village of Brighthampton. His account is as follows:—

“On the 24th June, 1857, as some workmen were employed on the site of the old malthouse at Brighthampton, which has been recently removed, they discovered, immediately beneath the floor, a grave containing the remains of a child, lying east and west, the head to the west. There were found with the remains beads of amber and of glass, a small brass-bound bucket, the staves of which, being of wood, had perished, a small knife, a pair of fibulæ of bronze gilt, and some unknown fragments in bronze.”

La sépulture chrétienne du xie au xvie siècle est encore peu connue. Son histoire ne saurait guère être établie qu'à l'aide de documents liturgiques et archéologiques. Déjà l'archéologie sacrée a étudié avec un louable zèle les monuments qui recouvrent le sol; mais ceux que la terre cache dans son sein sont encore inexplorés. Pour un grand nombre de ces documents une difficulté insurmontable se présente. Consacrés par l'usage et par la religion, les asiles qui les recèlent sont inviolables et inaccessibles même pour la science, sauf le cas de travaux publics.

The attention of the Council of the Society of Antiquaries having been directed to the recent Act of Parliament for the disafforesting of the royal forest of Wychwood, it was deemed right that some account of its ancient and recently existing state should be placed on record: I accordingly proceeded in the autumn of the past year to make a personal survey of this well-known yet but little explored district,—a district which in old times extended, north and south, from the woody upland of Charlbury and Ditchley to the green meadows of Witney and Cogges; and east and west, from the stream known as the Glyme, near Woodstock, to the borders of Gloucestershire.

There are three questions of an antiquarian character connected with the so-called Temple of Serapis at Pozzuoli, which may be important in discussions relating to the geological phenomena exhibited by that celebrated building. These are:—

1st. Was it a temple of Serapis

2nd. Its probable age?

3rd. Can any light be thrown upon its history, or on the dates of the various changes of level?

The title which has just been read to you will shew that it is not my intention to enter into the inquiry which has been so learnedly conducted by others, into the various substances which have been used for the purposes of writing, and the times when one substance became superseded by another which was found more suitable to the purpose.

Archæology, at the present day, is no longer the ill-appreciated amusement of the few. Its study is widely spread, while its importance is generally admitted, even by those whose inclination does not lead them to pursue it as a study.

No branch of archaeology appears to excite more general interest than sepulchral research in our own land, or in those foreign lands whose early inhabitants were, so to speak, kinsmen of our forefathers. This widely-diffused interest of our day happily differs altogether from the indiscriminate curiosity of a preceding age. And if science ventures to pass the sacred threshold of the tomb, it is solely because the early domestic history of our race is only to be found recorded in the tablets of the dead.

The facilities which you have afforded by the publication of your Kalendar for the public use of the valuable documents preserved in the State-Paper Office, relating to the first half of Queen Elizabeth's reign, and your kindness in permitting me to make extracts from your own book of MSS. on ancient armour, consisting of the scattered Exchequer documents, enable me to send to our Society some notices of the Tower of London and of the armouries there and at Greenwich, which are very interesting in themselves, and are chiefly of a date forty years earlier than the lists communicated by William Bray, Esq. F.S.A. to our Society, and reprinted by Meyrick from the Archæologia.

The original record, from which the Extract that follows was taken, has been preserved in the Bermingham Tower, Dublin. It contains the Pleas of the Crown and Gaol Delivery at Waterford, before John Wogan, Justiciary of Ireland, on Thursday the morrow of St. Matthias the Apostle (February 25), in the fourth year of the reign of Edward II. (1311), and will be seen to be somewhat illustrative of the social condition of the inhabitants of that part of Ireland at the time of the invasion by Henry II. and also at the commencement of the fourteenth century. The Ostmen mentioned in it were the descendants of the Norwegians, commonly spoken of as Danes, who had many years before formed permanent settlements on the coasts; as to whose history Worsaae's volume on the Danes and Norwegians in England, Scotland, and Ireland may be consulted with advantage. A few preliminary observations may serve to render the document more readily intelligible.