so abundantly in the Christian graves of Bouteilles"; of Martin-Eglise, in 1857; of Rouxmesnil, in 1858: of Etran, in 1859"; of Janval in 1860°; and of Petit-Appeville, in March and April, 1861. The charcoal with which it was filled, and the scent which it still retained, sufficiently indicated the use to which it had been put at the funeral. It was a censer for the dead, as M. de Lafons de Mélicoq ❜ so well terms it. This practice, which was customary in the fourteenth, fifteenth, sixteenth, and even in the seventeenth century, does not appear to me to ascend beyond the thirteenth. At least, at the present day we have not discovered any evidence that establishes its existence in the eleventh or twelfth centuries, the epoch in which perhaps it had its origin, whilst such is abundant in the thirteenth, and above all in the fourteenth. Thus, then, from the form of the vase, and its employment in the grave, the interment cannot be dated earlier than the last-mentioned era. On the strength of this evidence I wrote to M. Souquet that the Etaples grave appeared to me of the Christian middle age, and belonged to the time of the last of the Capetian dynasty or to that of the first of the house of Valois. I also remarked to him, that beside this vase the workman might meet with others, as this kind is seldom found alone; often we find them in fours, and more frequently in sixes. I further requested him to inform me whether there was not a chapel, a church, or a Christian cemetery in the neighbourhood of the discovery; and I expressed my regret that I had not received the coffin-nails. On the 8th of July M. Souquet sent the nails, and also the information that I had requested. He said that the vase which he had forwarded had not been found alone in the grave:—“I saw beside it many fragments of another vase of the same kind of earth. I have also in my possession the bottom of a vase of grey earth, which is covered externally with a reddish glaze. I presume that the place where these objects have been discovered was once a cemetery, as we have found many bones in it. If you examine the plan which I have published in my History of the Streets of Etaples,' you will see that the grave was near the church of Notre-Dame, which was formerly parochial and encompassed by its cemetery. This cemetery was interfered with in 1378, in the course of fortifying the city during the wars with the English, and again in 1590 during the troubles of the League; it was completely abandoned in 1790, on the suppression of the parish of Notre-Dame." m 6 Sépult. Chrét. à Bouteilles, 8vo. pp. 50-52, 4to. pp. 20, 21, figs. 1, 4; Bull. Mon., tom. xxv. pp. 273-300; Archæologia, vol. xxxvii. pl. xi. figs. 1, 4. n Quelques Particularités relatives à la Sépulture Chrétienne du Moyen Age, pp. 5, 7 of L'Art Chrétien, tom. iv. pp. 428, 430. • Guide du Baigneur à Dieppe et dans les Environs, edit. 1861, p. 115. P Annales Archéologiques, tom. xix. p. 279; Archéologie Céramique Sépulcrale, pp. 15, 16. This information is sufficient to support my deductions, and to enable me to draw a sound archæological conclusion. It is evident that the grave with which we are concerned was in a Christian cemetery, and in that portion which was abandoned in the latter part of the fourteenth century; a fact which explains the preservation of the various objects to our day. From the vases with charcoal found with the deceased, and the type of these vases, the interment must date from the end of the thirteenth or the beginning of the fourteenth century. The form of the sword does not contradict this attribution. The form is evidently of the middle age, and it appears to belong also to the fourteenth or fifteenth century, as we may see on the gravestones of those periods, and also by a discovery recently made in England'. The wooden coffin was equally in use at that epoch; we know of many examples. The nails from Etaples do not resemble those of our country of the eleventh or twelfth century, but we have no knowledge of those of the fourteenth, and no doubt such things have in all ages admitted of much variety. Besides, their length proves that the planks of the coffin must have been very thick, a circumstance that agrees well with the custom of the thirteenth century, when even the trunk of a tree (in trunco ') was employed in Christian burial. Lastly, the person was buried armed, as is proved by the sword; and that he was a knight is shewn by the spur. Our studies in Christian sepulture, but recently commenced and circumscribed in area, have not as yet made us acquainted with the practice of armed inhumation in our own country, but there are other places where burial with arms endured for a much longer time. A French traveller, who visited the Low Countries in the seventeenth century, states that in See on this subject some excellent papers in the GENTLEMAN'S MAGAZINE, from July, 1858, to March, 1859, (but particularly those for July, August, September, and October, 1858,) entitled "The Arms, Armour, and Military Usages of the Fourteenth Century;" the author is Mr. Hewitt, of the War Office, London. At Holme-hill, near Market Weighton, Yorkshire. 1861, p. 18. See GENT. MAG., July, • See Sépult. Chrét., 8vo., pp. 24-27; Bull. Mon., tom. xxv. p. 2; Charma, Rapport, pp. 20, 22, figs. 10, 11, 13, 15; Mém. de la Soc. des Antiq. de Normandie, tom. xix. pp. 494, 495. Dom Luc d'Achery has cited the following passage from a statute of Maurice, Archbishop of Rouen (1231—1236):-" Sepeliri vel in terrâ, vel super terram, in plastro, in trunco."-Spicilegium, tom. ii. p. 522. In my "Tomb of Childeric" I have noticed several interments of this kind, particularly one of the ninth or tenth century, found at Selby, in Yorkshire, in 1857. T. Wright, in GENT. MAG., Aug. 1857, pp. 114, 119. (Le Tombeau, pp. 45, 47.) In 1860 M. Mallary found, in the church of Bourg Lastre (Puy de Dôme), among stone coffins of the eleventh or twelfth century, the trunk of a tree containing a woman and a child. Revue des Soc. Savantes, 2e série, tom. v. p. 147. those provinces which border upon our own those who are of noble extraction are interred with their arms". It appears, then, that the custom of armed burial continued longer in Artois and the Boulonnais than in Normandy. We have said that the deceased was a man of gentle blood. The spur proves this, for at that period it was the sign of nobility and mark of knighthood, as is affirmed in the old proverb—“Vilain ne sait ce que valent éperons *." From all this I conclude, with a fair semblance of probability, that the grave at Etaples is that of a Christian knight who was interred with his arms in the thirteenth or fourteenth century of L'ABBÉ COCHET. our era. Dieppe, July 14, 1861. RESTORATION OF ST. PATRICK'S CATHEDRAL, DUBLIN. - Mr. Guinness has undertaken the work of restoring this fine building in the true spirit, and is carrying out his intention with consummate taste and judgment. Great labour, as well as extensive research, has been brought to the accomplishment of the task, which requires not merely the preservation of every detail of the original plan, but the detection and removal of all innovations, and the restoration of the design in its original beauty and harmony. The finest cathedrals in England —Westminster, Salisbury, and York-were visited and compared, and the result has been to shew that, in almost every instance when St. Patrick's was repaired or improved, the ancient model was departed from. All these incongruities it is intended shall be removed, and the restoration will be as complete as ancient research and modern science can make it. Before taking down any portion of the building a series of elaborate measurements were taken, and accurate drawings, both of vertical and horizontal sections, were made of even the minutest details. That marvel of modern science, photography, was also employed, and stereoscopic views were taken at various points, to preclude the possibility of any mistake in the subsequent re-erection. It is expected that two years will be occupied in the restoration of this cathedral, and the cost, instead of being £20,000 or £30,000, as at first estimated, will probably reach to £80,000, which Mr. Guinness will have the exclusive honour of spending on the work. ROMAN CEMETERY IN NORMANDY.-A labourer in ploughing a field at Manneville-la-Goupil in Normandy very recently, turned up some articles which appeared to indicate that a Roman cemetery had existed on the spot. The Abbé Cochet immediately caused excavations to be made, when a funeral urn containing the burnt bones of an adult, a cup in green glass, three bronze statuettes, one of them one of the Antonines, and some other articles were discovered. Voyage des Pays-Bas, p. 41, edit. 1677. * Bull. de la Société des Antiquaires de Picardie, année 1856, tom. iv. p. 280; Rabanis, in La Revue Européenne, tom. xii. p. 623 (Oct. 1, 1860) after M. Deloche, Cartulaire de Beaulieu. CELTIC AND SAXON GRAVE HILLS a. In our memoir of the late Mr. Bateman we alluded to this volume, published but a short time previous to the death of the author; and also to the "Vestiges of the Antiquities of Derbyshire," published by him in 1848, and reviewed in the March number of our Magazine of 1849. The two works comprise a large mass of information on the sepulchral usages of the early inhabitants of the midland counties of England-information more complete, as well as more extensive, than has ever been published on the British antiquities of any particular division of the country. The investigation of upwards of 400 tumuli is recorded, and in a manner so painstaking and judicious as to leave nothing to be desired by the archæological student; while the craniological notices give additional value to the researches, and the use made of many of them in the Crania Britannica, now in course of publication, should stimulate others who open barrows and ancient cemeteries to preserve the skulls of their occupants. The permanency of forms of the human crania and their striking peculiarities should surely be taken into consideration by the scientific excavator; and yet they have been hitherto almost entirely disregarded. We direct attention to the remarks made by the editors of the Crania Britannica, on the conclusions which Mr. Bateman arrived at on studying the skulls of the Derbyshire graves in connection with the modes of sepulture and their general remains. Many of his discoveries are also there illustrated with engravings of the skulls, and of ornaments and other remains in juxtaposition. Derbyshire and the north of Staffordshire have preserved far more of their British antiquities than the south and east of England, which have been more extensively cultivated from an earlier period. The urns indicate rude and early art with ornamentation not always tasteless; and usually of forms and patterns which seem quite uninfluenced by contact with Roman civilisation. They are generally accompanied by weapons of flint, stone, and bronze, horns of the deer, and tusks of the boar. The barrows which contain jet ornaments of elegant workmanship are probably of later date, and may be considered Romano-British. In many cases the skeletons of the more primitive interments were enveloped in skins of animals, which had doubtless formed the dress of the deceased when living. It will be remarked, in reading Mr. Bateman's volume, that most of the barrows are called lows, the Anglo-Saxon hlaw, a small hill, or tumulus. Full one hundred and fifty are thus designated with distinguishing prefixes. The "Ten Years' Diggings in Celtic and Saxon Grave Hills, in the Counties of Derby, Stafford, and York, from 1848 to 1858. By Thomas Bateman." (London and Derby. 8vo.) Saxons perfectly well understood their sacred character, and in very many instances resorted to them for the interment of their dead, burying them in the upper part, high above the original deposit. Of itself this practice would somewhat denote a sparse and poor population, which the remains themselves indicate, for they are by no means so intrinsically rich as those of the Saxon cemeteries of the south and east of England. Not that they are in any way less worthy the study of the archæologist, as for example the contents of the barrow at Benty Grange, near Monyash, which contained the silver decorations of a leathern cup, crosses and wheelshaped ornaments, some enamelled ornaments, and, rarest of all, the iron framework of a helmet, surmounted by the image of a boar. This is so curious that such of our readers as are not yet acquainted with Mr. Bateman's volume, cannot fail to see in the following account how very much depends upon care and knowledge in excavations such as Mr. Bateman conducted so successfully. As the historical interest of the helmet was, we believe, first pointed out in the Collectanea Antiqua, we extract, in this instance, from that work, full engravings being given in the "Ten Years' Diggings:"— "It will be observed that the framework of the helmet, which is not unlike that discovered in Gloucestershire, is ornamented with a cross and the figure of a boar or swine, the one a Christian, the other a Pagan emblem. The hog is a common adjunct to some of the Gaulish coins; and Tacitus, speaking of the habits and customs of the Germanic tribes on the right shore of the Baltic, observes that they bore, as a charm against the dangers of war, images of wild boars :-'Matrem deum venerantur: insigne superstitionis, formam aprorum gestant. Id pro armis omnique tutela: securum deæ cultorem etiam inter hostes præstat.' The historian's account is confirmed remarkably by several passages in the poem of Beowulf. In a description of warriors it is stated that "When Beowulf is prepared for encountering the mother of Grendel, he is represented clothed in mail, and wearing a helmet over the hood of mail :— 'Surrounded with lordly chains, the weapon-smith had wrought it, had set it round with the shapes of swine, "In a funeral ceremony the figure of a swine is mentioned as a conspicuous object: |