critique before; a kind friend, who is himself a member, having but recently called my attention to it, by lending me your number for August. I am, sir, your most obedient servant, Bristol, October 9th, 1843. GEORGE PRYCE. ANCIENT TOMBSTONE. Clifton, September, 1843. SIR, There is a plate in Barrett's History of Bristol (opposite page 400), representing a grave-stone dug up in 1748, by the workmen employed in making the foundation for a building on the site of the ancient convent of Dominican friars in Lewin's Mead. The sculpture, or rather the engraved lines upon it, exhibit a lamb from whose back grows a vine which assumes the crucial form, with a head of the Saviour crowned with thorns in the centre of the cross. The lamb bearing a cross was a very favourite device in former times, and occurs frequently as an armorial bearing, as well as in the sculpture of churches; ordinarily however, the cross is of simple form, and supported by the fore foot of the lamb, which stands therefore upon three feet only. The lamb, in the drawing referred to, has one of its forelegs raised in the position usually observed; and therefore I conceive it probable, that as the stone was in a mutilated state, the draftsman has fallen into an error in making the cross appear to rise from the back of the lamb instead of from its foot; but what I would call your attention to, is a scriptural allusion which it appears that the cross itself is intended to convey.-The vine has eleven branches, and the head of Christ being enclosed within a circle formed by the stem of the vine seems plainly to indicate a reference to the passage, I am the vine, ye are the branches;" Judas Iscariot is not admitted as a branch of the true vine. It may savour more of mere conjecture to observe that the artist may have intended those two larger branches which constitute the arms of the cross, as representatives of John and Peter, the disciple whom Jesus loved, and the rock on whom his house was built. The reference to scripture here is easily discoverable, without being palpably evident; and it may serve to strengthen the conjecture that the curious carven devices we so often meet with in the architectural works of the middle ages, inexplicable as they frequently appear, were not mere fantastic creations, but were of an emblematic or symbolical nature. Barrett reads the inscription round the stone referred to thus REYNALD GOLDE: GIST: ICI : DEV: [ESTU] DE SA ALME. E G.... MCCI. .... But I think it very questionable whether we can depend upon the date 1201. There is no proof of any religious house having occupied the spot where it was discovered until some years after that period, the convent of Dominican friars having been founded by Maurice de Gaunt some twenty or five-and-twenty years later. It is difficult to conjecture EIT what words the letters E-G- could have belonged to in the inscription; and the former part of it is without sense, or dependant upon a word to be understood. It is evident that the lower end of the stone was much defaced, because several letters were omitted as illegible; and it appears to me more than probable that those copied on the plate were not correctly deciphered, and that the inscription was a rude couplet, in a form of frequent occurrence : REYNALD GOLDE: GIST: ICI: DIEV DE SA ALME YEZ MERCI. The date must then have been on the fourth side, which is represented blank in the engraving. I am, sir, your obedient servant, [That our correspondent's observations may be the better understood, we have reduced from Barrett the drawing to which he alludes. We have no doubt that he is correct in his interpretation of the vine, but with regard to the inscription, as the stone itself cannot now be examined, we will not offer an opinion, which could be but idle conjecture. It seems pretty evident, however, that Barrett did not copy it correctly, as he has failed to make sense of it. It will be observed, too, that in the cut is written IEI, for ICI. ED.] SIR, From your abstract of Mr. Haslam's interesting paper, I grieve to learn that St. Piran's church, within ten years of its disinterment, has become a ruin, every vestige of which, it seems too probable, will soon have disappeared. When the church was first examined by Mr. Trelawney, Mr. Collins, and Mr. Michell, a light roof placed on it would have preserved it for ages, as it had suffered but little from the ravages of time. If it be as old as Mr. Haslam supposes, it must have escaped destruction by the piratical hordes which infested our coasts in its earlier days, and perhaps was treated even by them with reverential care; whilst the reformation and the civil war, to which we owe the loss of so many venerable fabrics, swept by without defacing St. Piran's church, for it was happily concealed from their fury by the friendly shelter of the sands. Having weathered so many storms, it has sunk in a treacherous calm; spared by the respect of lawless men, and preserved by accident from the malice of open foes, it has received its death-blow from the cruel patronage of its well-meaning and fair-spoken friends. "O domus antiqua-heu quam dispari dominare domino! The question, what state of things will justify the removal or appropriation of ancient remains, is one which, in most instances, may be easily answered. When their usefulness or beauty would suffer, or their object be lost to the world by leaving them where they are found, to save them must be commendable. The coin-the last hope of ambition, a statue-dug from a heap of ruins, and a few such matters, may fairly be taken possession of by those who feel an interest in preserving them. Cases, too, may occur, on which opinions will be divided; and hence, Lord Elgin's transfer of Grecian marbles to this country has not wholly escaped condemnation, although he could allege in his excuse, that the barbarians then in possession would, probably, have soon consigned them to the lime-kiln. But who, could he be assured that they would have survived the Greek revolutionary war, would not regret that they no longer adorned their own Athens ? Lord Elgin's excuse, however, will not avail any spoilers of our antiquities at home, for in this country, the law, if enforced, and public opinion if appealed to, would be sufficient for their protection; and, therefore, no plea can justify their removal from the situations they have immemorially occupied-especially as in almost every instance they owe all their charm to the Genius Loci-the inspiration of their native abode. I some years ago read with deep concern, that three heads-one of them, apparently, the key-stone of the doorway of St. Piran's church, and sundry other relics, had been placed in the Museum of the Royal Institution of Cornwall. The organ of acquisitiveness, methought, has attained its greatest development in the heads of my countrymen ;-now chipping Pompey's pillar-now purloining bits of stucco from the walls of Pompeii, or mutilating the tombs in Westminster Abbey; there are many, who, if not restrained *The following paper first appeared in the " West Briton" of December 22, 1843. by fears of personal danger, would steal a finger from the Apollo Belvidere, or its nose from "the statue that enchants the world," and all this for the paltry purpose of placing a misnamed curiosity on their mantel-pieces or lobby-tables, or receiving the thanks of a society of virtuosi for the donation of their plunder. Are societies of men of education formed that they may open show-rooms for the display of stolen goods? Such societies only hasten the ruin of those monuments of antiquity of which they should be the protectors. I do not, however, write merely with a view to censure; and I would submit to the Royal Institution of Cornwall a few suggestions, by the adoption of which, that society and similar ones will entitle themselves to the gratitude of every lover of antiquity. Let them limit their object to enriching their museums with accurate drawings and MODELS, either of the whole or of portions of all our ancient monuments-and let them no longer countenance the discreditable system of bone-grubbing, which is now so much in vogue, and has descended even to the minor societies in this county. Distant, as they are, but a few miles from any of our Cornish antiquities, how much more honourable will be the office of protecting and preserving, than of mutilating them. What tourist would not prefer an excursion of a few hours to a scene of simple and earnest, though it may have been mistaken piety, to handling in a museum, and wondering at the rudely-sculptured heads, and crunching between his fingers the mouldering bones of St. Piran and his companions? If something be not soon done to arrest the progress of destruction by antiquarian specimen hunters, and by the systematic and wholesale plunder of stone-carriers, masons, and farmers, and by the ruder, but scarcely less injurious attacks of wanton ignorance-within a century more, the record, the picture, and the piecemeal in the museums will alone remain, to assure our descendants that Cornwall had a past. A few instances, taken at random from the immediate neighbourhood of Penzance, will show that this is no improbable conjecture. In his valuable little work on St. Just, Mr. Buller has published Dr. Borlase's sketch of Chapel Carn Brè, near the Land's-end, as it existed in his time-eighty years since. In the drawing it is nearly perfect, and some, now alive, remember it but little impaired. It is now only a heap of ruins, in which nothing of the design can be traced. Much of one of the entrenchments at Castle Treryn (the Logan-rock), has been carted away. In the parish of Sancreed, Chapel Uny is now totally ruined, though it is said to have been used for divine service four times in the year, within the memory of persons but recently dead, and was certainly not long ago in tolerable preservation. A fine Cromlech, near the Beacon, in the same parish, whose appearance, in consequence of the upper stone having slipped off at its back, entitled it in the opinion of the country people to the name of the "giant's chair," has been broken up within the last five years. A monumental stone at Sparnon, near the road leading from Buryan church-town to the Logan-rock, and marked in the Ordnance map, has also been cloven by the occupiers of the land of a noble lord within the same period. On Choon castlethe most perfect of our British, or Danish (as Borlase considers them) stone-built hill-forts-the greatest havoc has been perpetrated within the last twenty years. At Zennor, a large Cromlech, described by Borlase, was wantonly demolished by some masons about forty or fifty years ago; and about the same time, another, in the parish of Gulval, met a similar fate from the same craft. A Cromlech at Lanyon, in the parish of Madron, larger than that commonly pictured, but unknown to Borlase, having been discovered only at the beginning of the present century, on the removal of the usual heap of stones under which it lay buried, was overturned shortly afterwards, and one of its stones being split, a part of it was taken away to form the "gravel" (girder) of a country chimney. Crosses innumerable have been destroyed, and their sites are now only known from local names indicating their former existence, or from portions of them built into the adjoining hedges. Many which remain have been converted to the most degrading purposes, or have become objects of sport to modern Vandals. At Madron church-town, a crucifix-interesting to the mere antiquarian, since it exhibited (as many others hereabout) in its sculptured kilt no uncertain memorial of the ancient Cornish dress-was removed a few years ago from the opposite hedge, in which it had been buried, to the outside of the blacksmith's shop, where it has served as a post in the shoeing of cattle. Little more than a quarter of a mile further north, a remarkably neat cross had long lain by the side of the stone containing its socket; but it was no sooner restored, by the liberal care of a gentleman then resident at Madron, than it became the butt of the miners, who repeatedly overthrew it, and at last broke its stem; and even after it had been again erected and united by a bar of iron, their persevering brutality succeeded in its final destruction. Many more instances in proof of my assertion might have been adduced; the above will, however, suffice, to draw attention to the conservation of our ancient monuments, whilst I doubt not as numerous and afflicting examples of the exercise of a destructive propensity might be collected from every locality in the county. Cases like these almost make one lament the boasted freedom of Englishmen to do what they will with their own-indeed the statements I have given induce a doubt whether they do not lie under the stigma of loving mischief for its own sake. It is humiliating to compare ourselves in these respects with the nations of the continent, where the better taste of the people renders unnecessary the jealous care with which their arbitrary, but in such matters one might say paternal, governments watch over their antiquities. For my part, I almost fear that ours will never be sufficiently protected, until some stringent law shall have made the proprietors responsible for their safety, and shall inflict a severe penalty on those who ruin what nothing can restore. It This, however, is more to be desired than expected; and, in the meantime, the Royal Institution of Cornwall might exert itself usefully and honourably in defence of what its members venerate. should constitute itself the protector of what yet remains, and by the influence either of entreaty or of shame, induce the landed proprietors to guard what is legally their property, but morally the property of every patriotic Cornishman. But that the society may occupy a position in which this high duty may be effectually discharged, they should remember how, some few years ago, the commander of a revenue |