Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 1.djvu/101

Rh opened with a panegyric by M. Cauvin on the general utility of Archæology; the services which it had already rendered towards the settling of several historical opinions previously doubtful, and an enumeration of those towns wherein branches of the Society had been planted. The architect of the department having then reported on the church reparations recently effected in it, funds were voted for casts from a capital, which he had spoken of as very remarkable, and for the purchase of a certain tumulus which seemed to him likely to afford, on excavation, some interesting objects. A map of the Celtic monuments of Le Maine having been presented, the director suggested that its value might be much augmented by the addition to it of the Roman roads.

At the afternoon sitting of this industrious Society, under the presidency of the Bishop, notice was given of a Credence-table of the twelfth century lately found in a church, remarkable also for containing an equestrian statue. A request was then made that a grant of money voted in 1839 for the restoration of certain carved stalls should not be revoked because of such restoration not having been commenced within the period assigned by the Society for so doing. M. Barraud announced that he had instituted a research into the several materials and ornaments of chalices and other ritual vessels of known date. A notice of a mass of bronze fish-hooks, and bronze celts, arms, and ornaments, all found under one large stone, then led to an enquiry how such heterogeneous articles became so placed together. Next followed a report on the monuments of the Upper Loire, chronologically and geographically arranged, and again subdivided according to their supposed purport or style of art: its author eloquently deprecating the frequent indifference to such things on the part of the authorities to whose guardianship the laws of France now commit them, and, in some degree, also of the clergy, even towards sacred objects. A new edition of the map called Peutinger's table was afterwards exhibited; and the Bishop having announced that a Chair of Archæology was about to be established in his diocesan seminary, M. de Caumont, in the name of the Society, thereupon offered its best thanks to his lordship, and suggested the introduction of some archæological instruction into the Government school of mechanical arts at Angers.

At the morning sitting on the 22nd, the chief judge of the Cour Royale condescendingly acted as Secretary, and business began by a report from the Society's inspector of the Aisne (no less a person than the Préfet himself) upon the several works recently executed in that department. Among these were some restorations in the cathedral at Laon, and other churches there, and the upholding of certain feudal castles and Roman camps—naming the members under whose Special superintendance these works had been conducted. The inspector of the Moselle then enumerated the labours of the Society in his department, one of which was the preservation of a Roman aqueduct, and the purchase of which structure was recommended as an instructive example of ancient subterraneous masonry. He