very satisfactory detail; the principal object of the work being carefully attended to, and all grave-mounds, with their contents, forming the staple of his pages. We do not propose to criticise the book; it would be like an attempt to criticise a dictionary. We intend only to quote certain portions, and to give some of their illustrations, as the

best method of introducing so useful a work to our readers' notice. As a specimen of the illustrations, we give the accompanying view of a cromlech at Knockeen, in Ireland, from a drawing by the late Mr. G. V. Dunoyer; and we are bound to accompany it by a view of the

sculptured stones of Gavr Innis, in the Morbihan, Britanny. These give a good idea of the scale and quality of the woodblocks used in such acceptable profusion.

In speaking of the vessels found inside sepulchral urns in these ancient British interments, the author observes:

"The next division, the so-called Incense Cups,' a name which ought to be discarded, consists of diminutive vessels which, when found at all (which is seldom) are found inside the sepulchral urns, placed on, or among, the calcined bones, and frequently themselves also filled with burnt bones. They range from an inch and a-half to about three inches in height, and and are sometimes highly ornamented, and at others plain.

"The examples I here introduce (figs. 114 to 125) will give a good general idea of these curious little vessels, which I believe have not been incense cups,' but small urns to receive the ashes of an infant, perhaps sacrificed at the death of its mother, so as to admit of being placed within the larger urn containing the remains of its parent. The contents of barrows give, as I have before stated, incontestible evidence of the practice of sacrificing not only horses, dogs, and oxen, but of human beings, at the graves of the Ancient Britons. Slaves were sacrificed at their masters' graves; and wives, there can be no doubt, were sacrificed and buried with their husbands, to accompany them in the invisible world upon which they were entering. It is reasonable, therefore, to infer that infants were occasionally sacrificed on the death of their mother, in the belief that they would thus partake of her care in the strange land to which, by death, she was removed. Whether from sacrifice, or whether from natural causes, the mother and her infant may have died together, it is only reasonable to infer from the situation in which these incense cups' are found (either placed on the top of a heap of burnt bones, or inside the sepulchral urn containing them), and from their usually containing small calcined bones, that they were receptacles for the ashes of the infant, to be buried along with those of its mother.

"The form will be seen to vary from the simplest saltcellar-like cup to the more elaborately rimmed and ornamented vase. Some are pierced with holes, as if for suspension, and one or two examples have handles at the side. The best examples of this kind are those shown on figs. 120, 124, and 125.

"Among the most curious vessels of this period may possibly be reckoned

the singular one here engraved (fig. 126), of which form only two examples have been discovered. They are much in shape like the drinking cups before engraved, but have the addition of a handle at the side, which gives them the character of mugs. One of these is in the Ely museum, and the other in the Bateman museum.'

Under the division of the Romano-British period, we find very copious information, and excellent woodblocks of urns, vases, etc., from which we select one as rather remarkable.

A very remarkable torque, now the property of Her Majesty, is given at p. 198, and a horseshoe found at Gloucester some years ago. We must content ourselves with a single extract from the AngloSaxon period:

"Of these urns (the East Anglian, etc.) Mr. Wright, to whom and to Mr. Roach Smith is mainly due the credit of having correctly appropriated them to the Anglo-Saxon period, thus speaks:

"The pottery is usually made of a rather dark clay, coloured outside brown or dark slate colour, which has sometimes a tint of green, and is sometimes black. These urns appear often to have been made with the hand, without the employment of the lathe; the texture of the clay is rather coarse, and they are rarely well-baked. The favourite ornaments are bands of parallel lines encircling the vessel, or vertical and zigzags, sometimes arranged in small bands, and sometimes on a larger scale covering half the elevation of the urn; and in this latter case the spaces are filled up with small circles and crosses, and other marks, stamped or painted in white. Other ornaments are met with, some of which are evidently unskilful attempts at imitating the well-known egg-and-tongue and other ornaments of the Roman Samian ware, which, from the specimens, and even fragments, found in their graves, appear to have been much admired and valued by the Anglo-Saxons. But a still more characteristic peculiarity of

the pottery of the Anglo-Saxon burial urns consists in raised knobs or bosses, arranged symmetrically round them, and sometimes forming a sort of ribs, while in the ruder examples they become mere round lumps, or even present only a slight swelling of the surface of the vessel.

"That these vessels belong to the early Anglo-Saxon period is proved beyond any doubt by the various objects, such as arms, personal ornaments, etc., which are found with them, and they present evident imitations both of Roman forms and of Roman ornamentation. But one of these urns has

been found accompanied with remarkable circumstances, which not only show its relative date, but illustrate a fact in the ethnological history of this early period. Among the Faussett collection of Anglo-Saxon antiquities is an urn which Bryan Faussett appears to have obtained from North Elmham, in Norfolk, and which contained the bones of a child. It is represented in the accompanying engraving (fig. 327), and will be seen at once to be perfectly identical in character with the East Anglian sepulchral urns. But Mr. Roach Smith, in examining the various objects in the Faussett collection, preparatory to his edition of Bryan Faussett's Inventorium Sepulchrale, discovered on one side of this urn a Roman sepulchral inscription, which is easily read as follows:

She lived thirteen years,

three months, and six days.'

To this Roman girl, with a purely Roman name, belonged, no doubt, the few bones which were found in the Anglo-Saxon burial urn when Bryan Faussett received it, and this circumstance illustrates several important as well as interesting questions relating to our early history. It proves, in the first place, what no judicious historian now doubts, that the Roman

4TH SER., VOL. I.

24

population remained in the island after the withdrawal of the Roman power, and mixed with the Anglo-Saxon conquerors; that they continued to retain for some time at least their old manners and language, and even their Paganism and their burial ceremonies, for this is the purely Roman form of sepulchral inscriptions; and that, with their own ceremonies, they buried in the common cemetery of the new Anglo-Saxon possessors of the land; for this urn was found in an Anglo-Saxon burial-ground. This last circumstance had already been suspected by antiquaries, for traces of Roman interment in the well-known Roman leaden coffins had been found in the Anglo-Saxon cemetery at Ozingell, in the Isle of Thanet; and other similar discoveries have, I believe, been made elsewhere. The fact of this Roman inscription on an Anglo-Saxon burial urn, found immediately in the district of the Anglo-Saxon cemeteries, which have produced so many of these East Anglian urns, proves further that these urns belong to a period following immediately upon the close of what we call the Roman period."

Both the author and the publishers are to be congratulated on the great care and completeness with which this interesting work has been drawn up, and the liberal use which has been made of the resources of art in so perfectly illustrating its pages.

PATRONYMICA CORNU-BRITANNICA, OR THE ETYMOLOGY OF CORNISH SURNAMES. BY RICHD. STEPHEN CHARNOCK, PH. DR., F.S.A., etc. Longman, Green, & Co.

1870.

FEW books can come more legitimately within the notice of a publication like our own than that, the title of which is now before us. The history and antiquities of Cornwall, a county so intimately connected with Wales, can never be looked on by us with indifference; and whatever refers to the public and private deeds of Cornish men ought to be interesting to all those who hail from the Principality. The author, in his preface, observes:

"The basis of a work like the present is, of course, a good collection of names. For one list I have to thank Miss Hext, sister of Mr. J. H. Hext, late of Gray's Inn. For another list I am indebted to Mr. J. C. Hotten, the publisher. I have, however, obtained the greatest part of the names from the Post Office Directory for Cornwall, and from the works of Pryce and Polwhele. The present volume contains from twelve hundred to fourteen hundred surnames. Many of these, though they are often borne by distinct families, are merely different versions of the same name; while some of them are not now in use, at any rate in their present form. Why there should be so large a number of Cornish surnames, and so small a number of Welsh surnames, I am at a loss to comprehend. Another curious fact is that so few of the latter should be derived from geographical names."

We all remember the old rhyme of Carew's:

"By Tre, Pol, and Pen,

You shall know the Cornish men."

The syllables in the first line being afterwards amplified by Camden, with the addition of Ros, Lan, and Caer; and certainly as you ride across Cornwall, you cannot but be struck with the frequent occurrence of syllables such as these. The author, speaking upon the subject of their frequent occurrence, says: