Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 9.djvu/278

 208 KUTiCES OF ARCHAEOLOGICAL PUBLICATIONS. Mr. Roach Smith, in his " Collectanea Antiqua," has designated these curious objects as buckets ; and Mr. Wright, in his recent History of the Early Inhabitants of Britain, suggests with much probability that they served at the deep potations in vrhich the Anglo-Saxons indulged. The larger specimens, he observes, may be the " wondrous vats," such as are mentioned in " Beowulf," from which the cup-bearers dispensed the wine. 3 Our readers will not fail to notice, amongst the personal ornaments disin- terred at Fairford, the superb specimens of fibula?, of the type of which a remarkable illustration is given in this volume of the Journal (see page 179, ante), the place of discovery in that instance being Warwickshire, not very remote from the scene of Mr. Wylie's labours. The examples of the scyphate tvpe of brooch are perhaps even more interesting and strikingly varied. This form is familiar to our readers through the fine examples exhibited by Mr. Neville, and that preserved in the Museum of the Cam- bridge Antiquarian Society, represented in a former volume. * How much were it to be desired that such an instructive assemblage of examples as has been rescued from the " Fairford graves," by the zeal and intelligence of Mr, Wylie, could be deposited in a National Collection, and afibrd the means of public instruction, so much to be desired. The subject of these discoveries, as the author truly remarks, " is not merely interesting to us alone as a national one, but intimately concerns all who claim to belong to the great and noble Teutonic family." Livonia has recently contributed the spoils of her ancient tombs to enrich our National Museum. ^ Whilst the foreign archaeologist, however, who may visit our shores will contemplate with high gratification that unique display of relics from the shores of the Baltic, and will doubtless desire to compare with them the vestiges of the same period and class — the tangible evidences relating to Teutonic settlements in Britain — he will in vain seek for that well- classified series at the British Museum, which would prove so valuable an auxiliary both to the historian and the antiquary. THE MONUMENTAL EFFIGIES AND TOMBS IN ELFORD CHURCH, STAFFORDSHIRE, with a Memoir and Pedigree of the Lords of Ellord. By Edward Richardson, Sculptor. London: G. Bell, fol. 1852. Thirteen plates etched by the author. It were needless, in the present state of antiquarian investigation, to insist upon the value of sepulchral portraitures, whether produced by the sculptor's or the engraver's art. The interest with which these memorials are regarded, even by persons wholly uninitiated in the arcana of costume and heraldry, or other points of curious inquiry connected with monumental antiquities, is doubtless to be attributed to their authentic originality, to the stirring thoughts which they tend to inspire, as contemporaneous portraitures of the worthies of olden time. We recognise an essential truthfulness of character, so to speak, not aided, it may be in many instances, by the highest powers of art, a truth of expression, how- ever, sustained with as much perfection as the limited skill of the period ' The Celt, the Roman, and the Saxon, the work entitled "Die Graber der Liven," P-429. by Professor Biihr (Dresden, 1850) has weapons, &c., described and figured in
 * Archaeol. Journal, vol. vii. p. 71. lately been purchased by the trustees of
 * The extensive collection of ornaments, the British Museum,