Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 1.djvu/291

Rh writer's conclusions were that they were but the waste pieces thrown out of the lathe in the construction of armillæ, and other ornaments, by the Romanized Britons.

Mr. C. R. Smith read a communication from the Rev. Beale Post on the place of Cæsar's landing in Britain. The author believes that Dr. Halley's discoveries, deduced from astronomical calculation, must after all be the basis of our reasoning on this point, but that a want of proper consideration of localities, and of the changes effected by partial recession of the sea, induced Halley erroneously to fix on Dover and Deal as the places of arrival and debarkation, for which Mr. Post proposes to substitute Folkstone and Lymne.

The Rev. R. H. Barham expressed an opinion that the alteration in the Kentish coast, in the time of Earl Godwin, precluded any inference being drawn from the appearances of the present line of coast.

The President made some observations on Roman remains, which he had noticed at the excavations for building the bridge at Kingston-upon-Thames.

Mr. M. H. Bloxam exhibited a variety of Roman and Romano-British antiquities from Warwickshire.

The meeting then, at a late hour, separated.

At eleven o'clock in the forenoon the sittings of the members were resumed in the Town Hall. The business was confined to the medieval section, of which the Ven. Charles Parr Burney, Archdeacon of St. Alban's, was the president, who took the chair, supported by the vice-presidents, the Rev. Dr. Spry and Sir Richard Westmacott.

The President opened the business of the section by a lucid exposition of the signification of the term 'medieval' period. He looked with peculiar interest to the operation of this section, as it was well calculated to unfold matters of the most stirring interest in connection with the general enquiry. By such an investigation the glory and even the prejudices of Englishmen would be awakened in defence of those noble ecclesiastical edifices which adorn our land. Architecture, in its most interesting phases, would be exhibited to them. The triumphs of that art, as evinced in the erection of such buildings as the cathedral of Canterbury, would be manifested. Its external beauties would be shewn, and its internal grandeur made known. That morning, with feelings of no ordinary gratification, he had visited the noble pile, and while viewing its gigantic proportions—massive in their harmony and magnificent in appearance—he could not satisfactorily conclude, indeed he repudiated the idea, that the age in which such buildings were erected could with any propriety be called the "dark age" of our country. He would now draw the attention of the meeting to the business before them.