According to your kind suggestion, I venture to address to you some notes made during a tour in the west of France last summer. You will probably remember that some years ago the late Mr. Rickman commenced a series of papers on the “Architecture of a part of France compared with that of England,” which were printed in the Archseologia. He concluded them by expressing a hope that others who may have time and opportunity would follow up what he had so well begun. His observations are confined to the northern part of France—Normandy and Picardy. The object which I had in view in undertaking my tour, was to pursue these observations in the other provinces of France which belonged to England in the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries. As I believe that their architectural character is very little known, you may perhaps think these notices worthy of being submitted to the Society of Antiquaries, more especially as I was accompanied by an artist who has made me some very careful drawings to illustrate my observations.

On the 23d of January I exhibited to the Society, through the kindness of Mr. W. M. Wylie, some Saxon Fibulae and Beads found at Fairford, with drawings of other objects of the Saxon period, which had been discovered in the same locality at intervals from 1844-5 to 1850.

The curious bronze collar, an unique variety of the beaded torc, according to the classification of these interesting objects proposed by Mr. Birch, was discovered a few years since, in Lochar Moss, Dumfriesshire, about two miles to the North of Cumlongan Castle. That extensive turbary appears to occupy a site once covered by a forest of great extent: the trunks of large trees are frequently found in it, and numerous vestiges of various periods have been brought to light, from time to time, in cutting peat, including a considerable number of coins. I have also seen impressions from two seals discovered in this morass: one of them appeared to be an antique gem, the intaglio representing Mars; the other was a personal seal of late medieval date, bearing an eagle displayed.

The Cottonian MS. Titus B. VIII. contains, among numerous other articles, a Narrative of the principal naval Expeditions of English Fleets, beginning with that against the Spanish Armada in 1588, down to 1603. The beginning of this curious Memoir is wanting, and the writer is unknown; but the facts through its several divisions are detailed with so much spirit, and the statements of the expeditions are so strongly mixed with contemporary feeling and contemporary anecdote, that I submit a transcript of them to our Society's notice. They contain many particulars of striking interest, which I have not found elsewhere. It is evident from several passages that the writer was in the armament with the Earl of Essex and the Lord Admiral at the attack on Cadiz in 1596; with the Earl of Essex in his voyage to the Islands in the following year; and with Sir Richard Lewson and Sir William Monson in 1602. Whoever he was, he was closely connected with Sir William Monson, if he was not Sir William himself.

The following Notes have been arranged partly with the view of affording the means for comparing the Celtic antiquities of the Orkneys with their prototypes situated in other countries, but more particularly in the hope of inducing some resident gentleman of more leisure and antiquarian lore to draw up a detailed description of these interesting Landmarks of Time, many of which are fast disappearing before the efforts of rural industry and agricultural improvement. There is, however, but little cause to apprehend any further dilapidation in the greater monuments of the county; an interest in their conservation is daily gaining strength, and we have the faith to believe that in a short time even a peasant will feel ashamed to remove from the inquiring presence of enlightened men an irrecoverable record of the thoughts and feelings of a by-gone race. The antiquities of the Orkney and Shetland groups will be found upon examination to be well worthy of a careful study, not only from being extremely numerous for the small extent of country in which they are placed, but also from the great diversity of their forms, in many places leaving us unable to determine the purpose for which they have been erected.

At the time I was engaged in collecting materials for my “Life, Progresses, and Rebellion of James Duke of Monmouth,” in 2 vols. 8vo. published in 1844, scarcely any detailed information could be procured respecting any of the exiled followers of the duke. The fate of only four individuals was actually ascertained; and the intimate personal history of no one, much less the general treatment, transportation, and return of any, could be learned from whatever quarter. A lady wrote to me, and obligingly supplied what is to so many an object of great interest, in the shape of a MS. narrative of the transportation, sale, and labour of John Coad; which I advised should be forwarded to Mr. Macaulay for his then expected work. An imperfect copy was accordingly sent, which has since been printed, the deficient part being supplied before the issue to the public from, I believe, the copy lent to me. Another of the kind contributors to my labours was one of the family of the late John Frederick Pinney, Esq. of Somerton Erleigh, who searched amongst old family papers, and has had the gratification of having produced for my use matter important to general history and biography.

I have the honour to transmit the translation of a long Egyptian hieroglyphical inscription, consisting of thirty-eight lines of text, published by M. Prisse, but not explained by him, in his Egyptian Monuments, which is of considerable importance for a due knowledge of the political history of Egypt. M. Prisse describes it as a tablet of Rameses II., taken from the ruin which is situate facing Dakke, in Nubia. This spot, which he states has not been as yet well examined, ought to be Contra Pscelcis, or rather Tachompso, according to Ptolemy. The tablet is of granite, and of very mediocre workmanship, and its lower part had been broken into several pieces, one portion of which, the only remaining, he had presented in the midst of the plate, not knowing its right position. “Notwithstanding its mutilation, this monument,” says M. Prisse, “is very interesting for the history of Rameses II., who, as this inscription states, as soon as the third year of his reign, had rendered himself illustrious by his victories. Since the drawing was made the tablet is supposed to have been transported to France by the Count St. Ferriol, and to be at present in the chateau of Uriage, near Grenoble.” So far M. Prisse. I propose to take up the subject where he has left it, and to give a translation of its contents, which presents no great difficulties except in three or four places, which I have marked. In the notes which accompany this Paper, I have indicated the new philological explanations which I have proposed, as well as such restorations as the text, often indifferently copied, demands. But the historical commentary, and such as requires more than mere verbal criticism, I have added to the translation. It is also much to be regretted that, while in France, in Prussia and in Austria, there is a national hieroglyphic type by which Egyptian studies are materially advanced, no such aid exists in England. Hence many points can only be proved by fewer examples cited than would have been the case had a type existed; although, in these instances, those which occurred to the writer as most conclusive have been selected.

In the 27th volume of the Archæologia (pp. 262—273) an account is given of an Egyptian Mummy, unrolled by me at Jersey in 1837, in which, for the first time, the special parts of the human body considered by the Egyptians to be under the protection or influence of the deities of the Amenti or Amunti, are distinctly pointed out and confirmed. On the 23rd of May last, at the solicitation of the Council of the United Service Museum, I unfolded another Egyptian Mummy, and, meeting with some objects confirmatory of the opinions expressed in my previous paper in the Archæologia, I beg now to submit a short notice of them to the Society of Antiquaries.

The Antiquities represented in the annexed anastatic Sketch have been found in the immediate vicinity of Boxmoor Station, on the London and North Western Railway, and have nearly all been brought to light and preserved by the intelligent clerk at that station, Mr. Byles. The neighbourhood was first known to contain any Roman remains through the discovery in 1837 of some Roman sepulchral interments in the burial-ground attached to Box Lane Chapel, which is about 300 yards distant from the station. An Account of the Objects then discovered will be found in the Archaeologia, vol. XXVII. p. 434. They consisted of a circular glass urn about 12 inches in diameter; the fragments of another of the same character; another of a square form with a handle; an earthen præfericulum or pitcher-shaped vessel used for funereal libations; a bronze lamp-stand and an earthen lamp; together with a number of large iron nails, with which the wooden cistae in which the interments were made were fastened together. It will be at once observed that these remains and those represented in the sketch are of a totally different character; the one being adapted for sepulchral and the other for domestic purposes. The majority of the latter were found in and around one of those circular pits or culinae which are not uncommon in the neighbourhood of Roman buildings.

Near Cambo, a small watering-place at the distance of about twelve miles from Bayonne, in the department of the Basses Pyrenees, France, are the remains of a camp which native antiquaries have variously conjectured as being of Roman, Celtic, Saracen, or ancient Cantabrian construction. Tt bears not the slightest resemblance to the three former, and from its being situated in the very centre of the Basque districts may be considered as the work of that people, perhaps at the time when attacked by the Romans and driven into their mountain fastnesses, where they manfully stood their ground in defiance of the imperial eagles, and which is the subject of the “Lelo,” a national chant, a translation of which I may be pardoned for inserting:

I. “The strangers of Rome marched against Biscay; and thro' Biscay sounded the song of war. Octavian was lord of the world, while Cecobidi was the leader of the men of Biscay.

Having been so particularly called upon, at the last Meeting of the Society, to look into the state of our information respecting Lynwode, one of our most celebrated countrymen, and to report the result, I should have been wanting in proper respect to the President and the Society if I had not taken some little pains to put myself in the condition to do what was required of me.

Previous to the time of Leland, little if anything had been done to collect the facts in the lives of eminent Englishmen of whatever class, and to form what may be called a Body of English Biography. This was, however, a task which that diligent antiquary undertook, and his work has formed the basis of all subsequent accounts of English authors who lived before the Reformation. Of Lynwode he gives what are the main facts in any history that might be written of him.

The Committee appointed by the Council on the 20th January, 1852, to investigate the circumstances attending the recent discovery of a body in St. Stephen's Chapel, Westminster, with power to have drawings made and with directions to report to the Society, beg to report, that, having obtained the necessary permission from Charles Barry, Esq., and secured the services of Mr. Scharf as draughtsman, they proceeded, on Friday the 23rd January, to the crypt under the Chapel of St. Stephen, Westminster, where the body in question had been discovered.