Page:Sir Thomas Browne's works, volume 3 (1835).djvu/519

Rh be of bell metal. And in one urn was found a nail two inches long; whether to declare the trade or occupation of the person is uncertain. But upon the monuments of smiths, in Gruter, we meet with the figures of hammers, pincers, and the like; and we find the figure of a cobler's awl on the tomb of one of that trade, which was in the custody of Berini, as Argulus hath set it down in his notes upon Onuphrius, of the antiquities of Verona.

Now, though urnes have been often discovered in former ages, many think it strange there should be many still found, yet assuredly there may be great numbers still concealed. For,—though we should not reckon upon any who were thus buried before the time of the Romans, (although that the Druids were thus buried it may be probable, and we read of the urn of Chindonactes, a Druid, found near Dijon in Burgundy, largely discoursed by Licetus,) and though I say, we take not in any infant which was minor igne rogi, before seven months, or appearance of teeth, nor should account this practice of burning among the Britons higher than Vespasian, when it is said by Tacitus, that they conformed unto the manners and customs of the Romans, and so both nations might have one way of burial;—yet from his days, to the dates of these urns, were about two hundred years. And therefore if we fall so low, as to conceive there were buried in this nation yearly but twenty thousand persons, the account of the buried persons would amount unto four millions, and consequently so great a number of urns dispersed through the land, as may still satisfy the curiosity of succeeding times, and arise unto all ages.

The bodies whose reliques these urns contained, seemed thoroughly burned; for beside pieces of teeth, there were found few fragments of bones, but rather ashes in hard lumps and pieces of coals, which were often so fresh, that one sufficed to make a good draught of its urn, which still remaineth with me.

Some persons digging at a little distance from the urn places, in hopes to find something of value, after they had digged about three quarters of a yard deep, fell upon an observable piece of work, whose description [hereupon followeth.]