The task of transcribing and completing Mr. Wickenden's and Mr. Bradshaw's Inventory of the contents of the Chapter Muniment Room at Lincoln has recently brought under my notice certain original inventories of plate and jewels which formerly belonged to that church.

Three of these with two or three subsidiary documents have already appeared in the Monasticon, but not satisfactorily edited.

Through the activity and skill of native and European excavators in Egypt during the last few years, our knowledge of Egyptian archaeology has been much increased; and nearly every collection of Egyptian antiquities in Europe has been substantially enlarged. Curiously enough, however, the contents of certain sections of these collections have remained without many additions; and among such sections must be placed the weapons of war of the ancient Egyptians, who lived before the eighteenth dynasty. There are in the various Egyptian collections a comparatively large number of bronze daggers and knives, and other weapons which are supposed to have been made during the rule of the eighteenth or nineteenth dynasty over Egypt; but, in many cases, the proofs that would make the belief a certainty are wanting. When, however, by means of inscriptions, or the knowledge of the circumstances which attended the discovery of certain bronzes, we can fix their date beyond all doubt, it is most important to put such facts on record. The object of the following notes is to describe some of the most interesting of Egyptian bronze weapons now known to us.

Having a very strong personal objection to the system of seat-reservation and appropriation in church, I naturally looked forward with considerable satisfaction to reading the pamphlets and works on the subject which I was told would convince me of the antiquity of the “free and open” system, and that “appropriation” and “reservation” were innovations of a comparatively-speaking recent date.

There can be little doubt that the spoon which now performs such an indispensable part in our domestic economy may lay claim to descent from a very high antiquity. Certainly as soon as the habit of eating pottage, in a manner such as we should consider decent, had been acquired there must have been spoons of some kind in use.

Since the last communication on the subject of my excavations at Lanuvium, which the Society of Antiquaries did me the honour to publish in 1886, those excavations have been carried on continuously, but very slowly, in consequence of the difficulties arising from the necessity of devising some means for disposing of the earth extracted in the course of excavation.

In the spring of 1889 a large series of documents formerly in the possession of Edmund Gibson, the learned prelate who for a quarter of a century presided over the see of London, were offered to me for purchase. I at once recognised their interest and importance, and, as it seemed to me that such documents should not remain in private hands, I secured them, not for my own collection but for the library of St. Paul's cathedral church. The papers comprised about ninety volumes in folio or quarto, together with a considerable mass of loose sheets of manuscript matter.

The way into the cloister of Westminster Abbey from the west is through what in the old days was the parlour, a place where the monks coming from their cloister on the east met those from outside with whom they might have business, who came from the court called The Elms on the west. Now, with its windows blocked up, its walls bare and weather-stained, and its carved and moulded work all decayed and broken, it seems a rather gloomy passage. But it was a light and beautiful room after the general rebuilding of the domestic part of the abbey, which Abbot Litlington completed with the legacy of his predecessor Cardinal Langham. It is in a line with the south walk of the cloister, and lies between the deanery—once the abbot's house—on the north, and the western part of the frater on the south. This end of the frater was walled off from the rest below and formed the pantry and buttery, above which was a gallery.

Complaints have been not infrequent of late years that the history of the Italian Renaissance is a subject that is worn rather threadbare. So far as popular and picturesque writing is concerned there may be some truth in this complaint, but it can hardly apply to serious studies, and it certainly does not apply to one branch of the subject, the history of the revival of the national style of architecture in Italy in the first half of the fifteenth century. Due homage has, indeed, been paid to the genius which raised aloft the splendid dome of S. Maria del Fiore, and the history of that achievement has, I believe, been thoroughly investigated. But Brunellesco was something more than an engineer, and the history of his purely architectural works, so remarkable for their severe and noble style, seems not unworthy of being studied in the same spirit and with the same scientific method as the Gothic architecture of the north. Nor are the buildings of Alberti, Antonio di San Grallo, Bramante, and other early architects less worthy of antiquarian research, and much of their history remains very obscure.

If any Fellows of our Society have lately perused the copious literature on those Memorials of St. Thomas which were long the glories of Christ Church, the cathedral church of Canterbury, and vanished in 1538, I would ask them to compare their experience of the result with mine. I rose from the perusal with a hazy vision of those objects and of the transactions concerning them, such haziness arising from the confused manner in which the notices of them were treated, the neglect to seek for definite meanings of terms, the clinging to sham tradition as if it were real history. In such cases the proper remedy is that which is now being applied to the general history of our country, namely, to rebuild the story out of affirmative evidence arranged in order of date and construed in harmony with known events and practices. I propose to apply that remedy here.

By the kind permission of the Warden of New College, Oxford, I have the honour to exhibit copies of four pen and ink drawings attributed to the year 1463.

They are from a MS. at New College, Oxford, entitled Brevis Chronica de ortu vita et gestis nobilibus reverendi viri Willelmi de Wykeham, which is generally attributed to Thomas Chandler. I do not find him in the Dictionary of National Biography, but he was a man of some note in his day, having been warden, first of Winchester and then of New College; chancellor of the university of Oxford, and of the churches of Wells and York; master of St. Cross hospital, near Winchester; dean of Hereford and the chapel royal; and secretary of state under Henry VI. and Edward IV. He died in 1490.

The ancient city of Lincoln, the Roman Lindum, was divided into two parts, the upper and the lower. The upper consisted of a nearly rectangular area, roughly 500 yards from east to west by 418 yards from north to south, surrounded by massive walls 10 to 12 feet thick, and further strengthened by an enormous fosse. It lay with its longer side upon the edge of a table-land which sloped rapidly down to the wide valley formed by the river Witham.

On the 17th May, 1877, Mr. Rendle exhibited to the Society a curious Chinese roll, illustrating Buddhist mythology, and dated in a cyclical year corresponding to A.D. 1631, in illustration of which I exhibited another roll of the same subject.

The county of Hertford from its proximity to London, from its containing the important Ancient British Capital Verulamium, from its being traversed by several British and Roman roads, and from the presence within it of more than one Roman station, might naturally be expected to prove rich in ancient remains, indications of the existence of which would profusely stud an archaeological map. As a fact, however, it seems doubtful whether such a map will exhibit so many interesting features as that of several other counties more remote from the metropolis; and certainly, for variety and number of archaeological discoveries, it cannot compete with that of Kent.

The plan of operations decided upon last year has been pursued without change during the season just past. It may be remembered that Insula I., partly explored in 1890, is traversed at its southern extremity by a modern road, which passes completely across the site of the city. All the ground to the north of this road was examined last year, but the small section south of it still remained untouched. One task was, therefore, to complete our researches in Insula I.; the other, there being ample funds for the purpose, to work out two more insulæ.