I feel much honoured by permission to offer a few words upon the curious and finely-preserved portrait of the Empress Leonora, mother of the great Maximilian, which our noble President exhibits before the Society this evening.

While there remain any in this utilitarian age who value accuracy in history, the date of the discovery of the continent of America by English vessels will not be regarded as unimportant. It is well known that Columbus, whose great achievement of 1492 has placed him on a pinnacle of renown which neither rivalry nor detraction can ever eclipse or undermine, was himself preceded in the actual discovery of terra firma by John and Sebastian Cabot. It was not till 1498 that that prince of navigators lighted on the north coast of South America, whereas it is a fact beyond all question that in 1497 John Cabot, accompanied by his son Sebastian, was on the east coast of North America. The question is, whether in that year they discovered that coast for the first time, or whether in 1494 it had been already seen by them, though possibly not explored. Both these suppositions have had their advocates at different periods, but in later years the materials for forming a sound judgment on the question have much increased under our hands, and I should not be occupying your time now if I were not of opinion that the entire collection of documents in our possession is sufficient to enable us to come to a decided conclusion.

The city which now bears the name of Santa Maria di Falleri—the ancient Falerii, Municipium Faliscum, and subsequently Colonia Faliscorum—has already supplied abundant material for two works which I published some time ago. I am now obliged to return to the same subject, for this city has furnished fresh bronze inscriptions, in archaic Latin, of no light importance to philology and history.

The inscription on the olla of Accia Tullia in the Disney Collection at Cambridge will be in the recollection of the Fellows, their attention having been specially called to it on December 5th, 1867, by the Rev. H. M. Scarth, who on that evening submitted to the Society an interpretation emanating from the Rev. Dr. McCaul, the learned author of a work upon the epigraphy of Roman Britain.

The name of Compton or Combe-Town, a town or place in a valley, derived, according to Dugdale, “from the situation, in a low and deep valley, the word in the British and in the Saxon importing no less,” is generally distributed throughout the southern and midland counties of England: we find it in Surrey, Sussex, Hampshire, Dorsetshire, Devonshire, Somersetshire, Wiltshire, Gloucestershire, Berkshire, Derbyshire, Staffordshire, Worcestershire, and Warwickshire. In some of these counties there are several places of this name, distinguished by different additional designations; in Warwickshire, besides Compton-Wyniate, (or, as I find it described in a deed of the 31st of Edward III. “atte Wynd-yate,” Wind-gate,) there is Long Compton, on the borders of Oxfordshire, Compton-Murdock, now called, from the family of its present owner, Compton-Verney, and Compton-Scorfen, corruptly pronounced Scorpion, a hamlet in the parish of Ilmington ; there is also the parish of Fenny-Compton, between Wormleighton and Farnborough, in the same hundred of Kineton wherein the other four Warwickshire Comptons are situated. The neighbourhood of this last Compton with Compton-Wyniate, or “Compton in the Sole” as it is sometimes called, has been the cause of some difficulty; and, as I think I shall be able to prove, of much confusion in tracing the descents of two ancient families who derived their names from these two villages, one still existing, the other long extinct, and neither related to each other.

My object on the present occasion is to call attention to what appears to be a popular delusion on a subject of considerable importance to the archaeologist. If it is not entirely a delusion, it is certainly a great exaggeration and misapprehension. And yet it is almost an article of faith with every Frenchman; and it has so long been accepted by German and English antiquaries as an ascertained fact that it will seem like heresy to doubt it—I mean the opinion that the medieval style of architecture usually called “the Gothic style ” is of French origin, and that Suger, Abbat of St.-Denis, near Paris, was the inventor, and the church of St.-Denis the first example, of it. The subject, in all its bearings, has been my favourite study for the last thirty years, and this particular church I have visited very often, and carefully examined on different occasions in company with some of the best-informed French antiquaries and architects, including the very able architect M. Viollet Le Due, who has charge of the works there.

The “folk-wanderings” changed the face of Europe; the blended iron despotism and shameless vice of Rome fell before them, and free states, soon Christian, re-establisht something like right and morals, while our modern languages, “barbarian “dialects more or less mixt with the Roman elements among which they grew, took the place of the official Augustan or the vulgar lingua rustica. Most eventful among these folk-wanderings was that flood which gradually overwhelmed Roman Britain. Pouring in from various border-lands, chiefly Denmark and the rest of Scandinavia, from the third century downwards, in small peaceful settlements, large armed bands, still larger array under wikings and sea-kings, it was only really closed by that strange combination of crown-seeking and land-seeking commonly called “the Norman Conquest.”

In the county of Northampton there are many sites which afford evidence of occupation by the Romans, either for military or domestic purposes.

Not only have we in the eastern extremity of the county, at Castor and in the neighbourhood, the remains of the city and great pottery works of Durobrivæ, with, in Huntingdonshire, the nearly-adjacent camp of Chesterton, and in the western portion of the county, near Daventry, the famous military station of Burrow Hill; but, besides these, along the valley of the Nen River and further westward, minor military stations are to be traced, which, occurring at short intervals, represent (as it has been suggested) a line of frontier and of military defence which was established by Ostorius Scapula, the Roman general in Britain under Claudius, and which extended from the Wash (Metaris Æstuarium) to the Bristol Channel.

I have the honour to exhibit to the Society of Antiquaries drawings and photographs of two remarkable objects of early Irish workmanship, one of them being a shrine destined for the reception of relics, the other a costly box or cover for a copy of the Gospels. Besides the ecclesiastical destination common to both these works, there is another link between them, namely, their traditional connection with the two famous Irish Saints whose respective names they bear, and who, during their lives, were closely united in the bonds of friendship.

In April last, immediately after the discovery was made, I had the pleasure to forward to the Society of Antiquaries a coloured photograph and short description of a portion of a tessellated Roman floor or pavement discovered in Burgate Street, in the city of Canterbury, and I then promised to communicate, when the operations then in progress should have been, completed, a general description of what might be further discovered, which promise I will now endeavour to redeem.

The history of an English Cathedral is an integral part of the history of England. Kings have been its nursing fathers and Queens its nursing mothers. Its charters are an important part of the national records. Its foundation, its decay, its restoration, mark epochs in the religious progress of the country. He who would tell the whole story of a cathedral can scarcely pass over without mention any great event of the national history; alike in war and in peace, in time of religious calm and in periods of wild fanatical discord, the grey time-honoured walls of the cathedral have borne their part. It has been the home of religion, the centre of light, the sanctuary where were gathered together the relics of poets, statesmen, warriors, theologians, kings; the last resting-place of the best and greatest men that have adorned the nation's annals.

Among the scarcest illustrations of monastic arrangement are original ground plans, such as those of Canterbury, Chester, the Charter House, and Tynemouth, with descriptions of a later date in the Rites of Durham. Next in value are inventories in detail, as in the case of Christ Church (Hants), Bridlington, and Tewkesbury; these also are extremely rare, but I have been able to add to them those of Whalley Abbey, Stanlaw, St. Martin's Newark, Dover and the Maison Dieu in the same town, Minster in the Isle of Sheppey, St. Osyth's (Essex), and St. Alban's, in the time of Edward VI.