the Jutes of Kent, the cross-shaped fibula of the Angles, and the cupshaped fibula of the Saxons of the West. I have no doubt that we shall gradually discover differences in other articles equally distinctive; for as yet we have much to learn in this class of antiquities. Several articles have already been found of which the exact purpose is not yet clear, and will only be ascertained by more extensive comparison, and by the results of future excavations. Of these I will only allude to one, which shews us the necessity of caution in guessing at the meaning of things we do not understand. A curious implement had been from time to time found with Anglo-Saxon remains in different parts of Anglia and Mercia. It was conjectured that these articles might be latch keys, and they were commonly set down as such; but there is nothing in their appearance to lead us to any distinct notion of the purpose for which they were intended, and they had been obtained so carelessly that it was not observed that they usually occur in pairs. At length a discovery was made at Searby near Caistor, in Lincolnshire, which at least helped us forward a step in explaining it. Two of these so-called latch keys were found fixed together with a bow of metal. From this moment it became quite evident that they were not keys. Numerous pairs of these articles,

30. Object from Little Wilbraham.

one of which is represented in the annexed figure, have since been found at Little Wilbraham, and may be seen in Mr. Neville's museum, and from the position in which they appear to have lain, and other circumstances connected with them, I believe that Mr. Roach Smith has hit upon the right explanation, namely, that they are the tops or handles to bags or purses, or to châtelaines, which were pendent to the girdles of the Anglian and Mercian ladies. Here, then, we have another article of costume peculiar in form to the Angles, and not found in the same form among the Jutes or the Saxons.

It is thus that, in these researches, as new discoveries are made, we arrive step by step at truth. I will mention one other, and a very remarkable instance of the errors which are apt to arise from careless observation, and of the necessity of extensive comparison. On the Continent, as in England, Teutonic graves had from time to time been accidentally opened, and articles taken from them had found their way singly into museums, where they were looked upon as a sort of nondescripts. A Prussian

collector named Houben, at Xanten, the site of a Roman station in the Rhenish provinces, in a book on the antiquities of that site published in 1839, engraved a skull with the brow encircled by a bronze crown, which had been found in a grave with articles of undoubted Teutonic character. There was something so romantic in the idea of this grim old king of the Teutons whose love of royalty was so great that he carried his crown with him even into the tomb, that no one dreamt of doubting the truth of Houben's statement. So much indeed were scholars thrown off their guard by it, that one of the most distinguished of the French antiquaries of the present day, the Abbé Cochet, having obtained from a Frankish cemetery

32. From the Valley of the Eaulne, Normandy.

in the valley of the Eaulne a hoop of a not dissimilar character, was inclined to adopt at first the explanation hazarded by the person who took it out of the earth, that it was a coiffure ou couronne." The correct explanation, however, had already been given by Mr. Roach Smith in his

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Collectanea Antiqua. All the different parts of the supposed crown and coiffure had indeed been found in Anglo-Saxon graves in different parts of England, and all more or less conncected with the remains of buckets. In fact you will recognise the principal ornament of Houben's crown among the fragments in the Faussett collection, in a portion of a bucket found in a grave on Kingston Down, represented in figure 33. An ornament resembling the similar ornament on figure 32, was pointed out by Mr. Roach Smith as having been found on Stowe Heath. Lastly, another portion of the ornamentation of Houben's crown, the triangular ornaments. round the rim, were pointed out by Mr. Smith in a bucket found at Wil

braham in Cambridgeshire, which is represented in our cut, fig. 34. More recently, the Abbé Cochet has entirely satisfied himself of the correctness of Mr. Roach Smith's explanation, by the discovery, in a Frankish grave at

:

Envermeu in Normandy, of a bucket nearly entire, with precisely the same ornament as that of the supposed coiffure found in the valley of the Eaulne. The Abbé has given an engraving of this bucket in the second edition of his most interesting and valuable work, La Normandie Souterraine, which by his kind loan I am enabled to reproduce here, (figure 35.) A comparison with the Teutonic remains in our island has thus solved the riddle. This crown of the German king, this coiffure of the Frank, were neither more nor less than the rims of buckets, such as are found not uncommonly in the cemeteries of Kent and East Anglia. One of Houben's diggers had no doubt put the rim of the bucket on the skull, to mystify his employer.

Unfortunately, until very recently, scarcely anything has been done in investigating the remains of the Teutonic tribes on the Continent which answer to those of the Anglo-Saxon cemeteries. The barrows of the districts which were occupied by the Jutes, Saxons, and Angles, before they came hither, and which therefore must possess so great an interest for us, are I believe altogether unexplored. For Germany, the only book to which I can point, which is a very valuable one, is the account of the Teutonic cemetery at Selzen on the Rhine, published by the brothers Lindenschmit in 1848. A similar cemetery near Lausanne in Switzerland has been explored by M. Troyon; and we have been made acquainted with the contents of the Frankish cemeteries in France by the labours of M. Baudot, Doctor Rigollot, and especially by the Abbé Cochet in his work, La Normandie Souterraine, already mentioned. The discoveries of the brothers Lindenschmit and of the Abbé Cochet are of particular interest to us in regard to our Anglo-Saxon cemeteries, with which the interments at Selzen are as nearly as possible identical. I will merely observe that, if there had remained any doubt as to the pottery found near Derby and in other parts of Mercia and East Anglia being of the Saxon period, it would have been entirely dispelled by a comparison with that found at Selzen; and point out the complete identity between the Saxon and German glass. The various forms of drinking cups, as well as their ornamentation, are the same in England and in Germany. The example to which I will call your attention is one of a very remarkable kind. In several parts of England, examples have been found of a singularly shaped glass vessel, ornamented externally with knobs of the same material. One of these has been found by Mr. Wylie, in Gloucestershire, and is

figured in his book on the Fairford Graves; another has been found in the county of Durham, and Mr. Joseph Clarke has the fragment of a third found in Hampshire. There is a fourth in the Faussett collection; and a fifth, which was found near Reculver, in the museum at Canterbury. One of these same glasses was found in a Teutonic grave at Selzen; and another, engraved by the Abbé Cochet, was met with in the Frankish cemetery in the valley of the Eaulne. The

36. Anglo-Saxon, Old German, and Frankish Glasses.

identity of these glasses, as well as of the drinking glasses of the more usual forms, is so complete, that I believe they must have all come from the same manufactories; and I think it probable that the Anglo-Saxons and the Franks at this early period obtained their glass from works at Mayence and along the Rhine. I would further observe that I have seen vessels of glass which were dug up at Mayence and were evidently of very late Roman manufacture, which displayed many of the peculiar characteristics of the glass found in the Teutonic graves. On the other hand, the cemetery at Selzen presents examples of jewellery and goldsmith's work of such a character as would lead us to suppose it was brought from Kent. The Frankish cemeteries are interesting to us because they shew us whence a few articles of rarer occurrence in the Kentish graves were procured, such as the battle axe, or francisque, a particular shaped long fibula, and the few examples of burial

37. Battle-axe, from Londinières, Normandy.

urns. I give here an example of the form of the first of these articles which seems to have been most common among the Franksit was found by the Abbé Cochet at Londinières on the river Eaulne. Axes identical in form with this