CHAP. EE.

ETYMOLOGY.

NAMES, says Mr. Frederick C. Lukis, however common, have some meaning; therefore they should be well considered: and the antiquary knows the value of examining further when these occur. He also observes, that on many occasions, within the range of his researches, he has had nothing but the name to stimulate or encourage him, and seldom has he been disappointed. Obsns. on the Prim. Antiq. of the Channel Islands. Arch. Jl. i. 145.

अ

the second, third and fourth centuries a Roman city existed in the fertile vale of the Ebbs the Watling-street from the sea-coast to the interior of the island running through its centre ;-and in proportion as this city progressed gradually to splendour and magnificence, two British towns on the eastern and western heights fell into irrecoverable decay. These towns are supposed to have been founded about

8 "The Romans found more than twenty towns among two nations only, upon the southern shore of the island." Whit. Manch. i. 3. apud Suetonius-Vespasian. The copy in the British Museum, of Whitaker's History of Manchester, has appended (we were going to write, is defaced by) Francis Douce's hypercritical notes,-notes some of them as remarkable for their illogical reasoning as for their impertinence. Gibbon whose learning and research are indisputable, repeatedly quotes with most favourable observations, "the particu lar historian of Manchester," whose work, he says "embraces under that obscure title, a subject almost as extensive as the general history of England." Decline and Fall. ch. 38. The two na

sixteen or seventeen centuries anterior to the Christian era; and at the arrival of the Romans, their inhabitants were celebrated for their learning, virtues, and the cultivation of the arts" they possessed.

In both these settlements, at various periods, flint and metal celts, and arrow heads,1 have

tions alluded to by Suetonius, were probably the Belgae and Damnonii. The incidental remarks of Julius Caesar, Diodorus Siculus, Pomponius Mela, Strabo and others, tend also to show the popu lousness of Britain and the amazing number of towns it contained. 9 King's Mun. Antiq. i.—Archael. xxvi.-Borlase's Cornwall,287. Whit. Manch. i.-Dioscorid. lib. ii. c. 110.-Orosius.-Xiphil. etc. 10 Vide Thorpe's Cust. Roff. pass.-At Dartford, in 1844, a fine celt was picked up at the very spot, where it is supposed Cæsar crossed the Darent. It is of grey flint, seven inches and a half long, and six inches in circumference in the widest part. It is now in the possession of R. Wilks, esq., Dartford. Subsequently to the discovery of the above, a metal celt was found in an adjoining field, on the same route; it now forms an ornament in the museum of E. Cresy, esq., F.R.S. Darenth. Report of the Proceedings of the Brit. Archaeological Association at the Canterbury Congress. p. 135. An account of another discovery of celts in the neighbourhood, will be found in the chapter of this volume, devoted to Cæsar's second Cantian Expedition, under the head of THONG. The word celt is used in the Vulgar translation of Job, for a chisel; and was therefore originally adopted in that sense by the writers on these instruments, says F. Douce in his MS. notes to Whit. Manc.* Sir Wm. Betham, at the First Congress of the British Archaeological Association, maintained in contradistinction to other members, that the celts were never used for battle axes, but simply as adzes for

*We have already noticed in a preceding page, Mr. Douce's Notes to Whitaker's Manchester, the note we have quoted above may be taken as a specimen :-the word "CHISEL" does not occur in the book of Job, nor in any other book of the Old or New Testament that we are aware. The word AXE is of frequent occurrence. It is used in Judges 9. 48, as a carpenter's tool-Figuratively, as the King of Assyria, Isa. 10, 15.-God's vengeance, Mat. 3, 10.-Vide also, Deut. 19, 5.-20, 19.-Jud. 9. 48.-1 Sam. 13. 20.-1 Kings 6.7.-2 Kings 6. 5.-Jer. 10. 3.-51. 20.-AXES, 1 Sam, 13. 21,-2 Sam. 12. 31,-1 Chr. 20, 3.-Psa. 74, 5.Jer. 46, 22.- Ezek, 26. 9.

C

been picked up; but unfortunately they have been given by the finders, to individuals, who, it is feared, were hardly sufficient archaeologists to have appreciated the presents, and unhappily, they are now dispersed.

At the commencement of the present century, these aboriginal towns' and the Roman city, were, alike, types of the old story,

"jam seges Troja fuit."

cleaving wood. That the Britons cast celts, spear, and arrowheads, was proved by the discovery in 1735, at Easterly Moor near York, of one hundred heads, with many lumps of metal and a quantity of ashes. The mould of a celt was also found by Sir R. C. Hoare, containing the instrument cast in it. The metal of which the British weapons and tools were made has been chemically analyzed in modern times, and the proportions appear to be, in a spear-head, one part of tin to six of copper; in a celt, one of tin and ten of copper; and in a knife, one of tin to seven and a half of copper. Meyrick's Orig. Inhab and Phil. Trans. for 1796. p. 395, etc. Spearheads of bone and flint and metal have been found in the barrows on Salisbury Plain. Ex Epist. H. Hatcher, armig.

1 It has been suggested to us, one of these towns might have been that alluded to by Nennius in his Historia Britonum •XXIIII• CAIR COLLON.-If so, it must have been the one upon the eastern heights.

2 In 1845, Barque-fields and Sole-field, were cultivated with wheat,whilst, as if to mock the skill of the agriculturists of the nineteenth century, in Mr. Silvester's garden were then growing sundry ears of far finer wheat,—the produce of grains found in a vase hermetically sealed with asphaltum, deposited by the side of a sarcophagus in a tomb at Thebes. The Egyptian wheat and the mummy are considered to have been simultaneously entombed during the reign of one of the seventeen kings, who comprised the eighteenth dynasty of the rulers of Egypt; or to speak clearer to our readers, between the years 1822, B.C., when, the Pharaonic