portraicture of blody Mary movid, and right aneath Deane Sudbury a panel opened,* and there came in an apparition fairly attired, lyke a yong dame after London fascion; by which mater I gat a grete fright, for I knewe of non such passage. And on the next Tewsdaie, when Maister

Wheler shuld have taken the key, he fell seeke of a grete stroke of payne across the smale of his bakke (a part which maie not be easilie found), and so I deliv'ed the grete key to Maister Millar, Scotus, and, he standing in som doubte, I also spake with Mr Prebendarie Darnell, who was verie willing to come in case of need; and with him I left your small keys, which he said he faithfully (would) liver over to you; and I did observe, Maister Rayne, that ye dore hinges of the auld cabinet be sore shaken and disrupted, so that it hingeth altogether by the locke, which mater gat worse in my handling by the breking of an auld nayle, and Maister Darnell said yt shuld be amendid when ye returned; and I send herewith yo boke of Lycens and Administration, and one other old boke out of the privy Closet, e dextra ut intraveris, and one boke of Aydes and Subsidies, which methinke I never saw afore: and, when ye have had y' use of it, I schal pray ye to send itt forth again and I have of yors one boke of Testaments, No. III, and ye Catal. spectant. Fishlake and Hemingburgh I could not finde; so that mater restith. And having good hope to see ye in Dirrame in short time, I saie no mor at this present, except sending ye a curious receit to cure dronkenness in any ill man or wife,

which is:

:

Take lyve vyperres, and bruise them not, but putt them in the pot or can whereof the dronkard schal go to drinke, and it schal moche amende him, and if he drinke of them and they engendre kindly in his kyte, it wil be better, for soe schall he drincke no moe.

Soe restith yours ever,

R. S.

The Correspondence of Mr. Surtees now published for the first time consists of some hundred and twenty letters, extending from the year 1803 to that of his death, thirty years later. The most prominent of his early correspondents (as here exhibited) were the late Mr. Kirkpatrick Sharpe of Edinburgh, and Mr. Frank of Stockton

upon-Tees, the nephew of Ritson; the more recent are the Rev. James Raine, Sir Cuthbert Sharp, and his printers the Messrs. Nichols. There are a few letters to the Rev. John Hodgson, the late Historian of Northumberland, and many-perhaps the most interesting of the whole-addressed to Mrs. Surtees. Mr. Frank of Stockton was addressed chiefly on behalf of Walter Scott, with reference to Ritson's poetical collections. Surtees's correspondence with Scott himself was previously worked up in Mr. Taylor's biography.

Castle, in Dumfriesshire, was a fellowMr. Kirkpatrick Sharpet of Hoddam collegian of Surtees at Christ Church: and Scott thus mentions him in a letter written from Edinburgh in April

1808:

Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe is here at present; he is, I find, an old college friend and correspondent of yours. He is a very ingenious as well as agreeable young man, and, I think, will be an excellent poet, when the luxuriance of his fancy is a little repressed by severer taste. I never saw so excellent a drawer of comic figures, for I will not debase his sketches by calling them caricatures.

We think in this case, and perhaps in some others, the Editor would have done well to have introduced both parts of the correspondence, following Mr. Taylor's example with respect to Scott. We have none of Mr. Sharpe's letters to Surtees, but among many of Surtees to Sharpe there is one, dated in March 1808, which warmly testifies to their mutual regard. It was written before Mr. Surtees had ventured into print, and we extract a portion of it:

I go on collecting and collecting, but as to publishing, I fear dealing with printers and engravers worse than critics. If they mauled your volume of poems, what will they do with a heavy volume of topography, full of uncouth names, law-Latin, and old

English, a noble field for errata? I got your poems, and have been most highly gratified, not less by the poetry than notes. Your account of the overloading Holyrood House Chapel is the most satisfactory

wall; a new oak screen has been placed under the chancel arch; also a new carved oak lectern, stone pulpit, and font. The windows throughout have stained glass, executed by Messrs. Ward and Nixon; those in the nave were given (together with the font)

by Major F. M. Martyn. The walls are built of the brown rag of the country, which is of divers hues, whilst the basement, string course, gablets, water tables, and crosses, with the dressings generally, are of Caen stone. The total cost was upwards of 2,1007.

IT was a bright and beautiful day in the month of May, 1846, when a few friends, all interested more or less in antiquarian pursuits, assembled at Strood, in Kent, at the invitation of Mr. Humphrey Wickham of that place, a gentleman well known to archæologists for his numerous and interesting discoveries on the site of the cemetery of the Roman city of Durobrivæ (Rochester) which lay at Strood. Our party consisted of Mr. Roach Smith, Mr. Fairholt, Mr. Jerdan (of the Literary Gazette), Mr. A. J. Dunkin, Mr. Wickham, myself, and one or two others. A fine yacht, which had been lent us for the occasion, waited upon us in Chatham harbour.

After a hearty breakfast at Strood, a prudent preparation for such an excursion, we went on board our craft, which was immediately put under weigh, and we were soon sailing down the waters of the Medway; I might well have added joyously, for there is nothing more exhilarating than an excursion on the water in one of the smiling days of spring. The banks of the Medway, so fine above Rochester bridge, are below Chatham nowhere very interesting, and they soon become extremely flat, with ground rising a little behind, on which we may trace here and there the tower of a village church. We pass on the left Upnor castle, and on the right Gillingham, two of the defences of Britain in the olden time, and then we come upon low level ground, extending from Gillingham to the isle of Sheppey, and known as the Gillingham, Upchurch, and Halstow marshes, from the three parishes over which they extend. They are not correctly described by their name of marshes, as they can hardly

be called marshes in the usual acceptation of the term; the ground is in fact hard, but it lies upon a very tenacious and fine clay, its level being a little above that of the river at high water, and the latter has cut it into innumerable little creeks and channels. It was at the mouth of one of the larger creeks, known by the name of Otterham creek, which runs in a winding course from the Medway up to the western boundary of the village of Upchurch, that we cast anchor.

It is time that I should state the object of our little voyage. Various accidental discoveries made of late years had shown that these marshes are the site of very extensive Roman potteries, which must, from appearances, have been worked during the whole period of the Roman occupation of the island. In many parts along the sides of the creeks, where the sea has broken away the ground and left a perpendicular or almost a perpendicular bank, we can see running along at a depth of from two to three feet a regular layer, in many places a foot thick, of Koman pottery, most of it in fragments, but here and there a perfect or nearly perfect vessel, and mixed with lumps of half-burnt clay. The bed of the creek is formed of the clay in a liquid state, forming a fine and very tenacious mud, which is completely filled with the Roman pottery, which is more easily procured in the mud than in the bank, and with less danger of breaking the perfect specimens. These latter may be felt by pushing a stick about in the mud. When I say more easily found, I mean by those who have no objection to trusting themselves into the mud, with the hope of getting out of it again.