notice, and these were from another part of the ground. I have one of Antoninus Pius, in a fine state of preservation, on the reverse of which is a figure of Victory bearing a shield, inscribed VIC. GER. The other of Domitian; reverse, a figure of Plenty, bearing in her right hand a pair of scales, and on her left arm a cornucopia.

As far as my observation has gone, Roman remains are found in Southwark, usually at depths varying from 10 to 14 feet; and the reason that they were not discovered in other parts as well as on this spot, is, I conceive, that the workmen have not attained sufficient depth; here it was necessary to go to a greater depth for the extensive kitchens and cellars required for the above-named premises.

The particular description of the articles referred to, with drawings of them, shall, if acceptable, form the subject of another communication.

Yours, &c. WILLIAM TAYLOR.

I TOO (see p. 216) have been surprised that Collins should have passed over Thomas Sidney, a younger son of Sir Henry, K. G. and younger brother of Sir Philip Sidney, and of the first Sidney Earl of Leicester, with a notice of his name only, and the addition that should show that he was a knight, which he was not. The notices of his short life which have been collected by your Correspondent are valuable. But I would take the liberty to observe that he seems to have been misled by the Lansdown MS. no. 892, when he presents the notice of the three marriages of the daughter of Arthur Dakyns, as a "document," and as in fact a copy of an inscription in the church of Hark

ness.

The inscription is still existing, and contains a very clear account of the three marriages of Margaret Dakyns, the heiress of Harkness. What is found in the Lansdown MS. is a kind of abstract of it, and is in several particulars either deficient or erroneous. And in reference to the subject for which it was produced, and to the curious and important question which your Correspondent has raised, whether this Thomas Sidney did not have issue?-it is the variation between the abstract and the original which alone

affords room for such a question; the original showing that "he died without issue, the 26th day of July, 1595.” You, Mr. Urban, have printed the inscription at large in your LXXth volume, p. 739.

The relict of Thomas Sidney married Sir Thomas Posthumus Hoby, whose wife she died Sept. 4, 1633. She was buried in the church of Harkness, in the grave of her parents; SO neer," in the words of her epitaph, "unto the bodies of her father and of her mother, as that all three will become but one heape of duste."

A lady whose first husband was a Devereux, her second a Sidney, and her third a Hoby, and of whom there is so complete a history on the monuments of herself and her family, ought not to have been left without a notice in the Peerages. She is not mentioned even by Vincent, though he corrects Brooke for having styled Walter Devereux her husband" knight.'

The marriage of Alexander Cosby (p.214) with Dorcas Sidney appears in a pedigree of the family of Allot, compiled about the reign of Charles I. in which it is shown that the mother of Dorcas, and the wife of William Sidney of Otford, was Elizabeth Allot, a daughter of Robert Allot of Yorkshire, by Elizabeth Waad, a sister of Armigael Waad, the navigator.*

In one of Aubrey's MSS. is the following curious fragment of Sidney genealogy, which may suggest to your Correspondent lines of inquiry in his search after the stray members of this peculiarly interesting family, even if he and others of your readers should agree with me in thinking that Aubrey has here, as in some other instances, given perpetuity by his pen to the floating and untrue rumours of the time.

His statement is this:-Sir John Sidney, brother to Sir Philip, married a daughter of Huntley of Bonwell in Gloucestershire, esq. and had a son and a daughter. The daughter named Pembroke married Strode. The son John married a daughter of Thomas Lyte, and had a daughter, who married a yeoman, who lived near LyteCury in Wilts. The widow of Sir John Sidney married Thomas Lyte of Lyte-Cury, and had issue by him. Yours, &c.

vol.

J. H. See Hunter's Deanery of Doncaster, II. p. 366.)

Mr. URBAN, Sarum, Jan. 25. I SEND you a drawing (Pl. II.) of the West Door of Newton Chapel, near North Petherton, Somerset.

The figures refer to the parable of the Ten Virgins in the 25th chapter of St. Matthew, and the workmanship exhibits a mixture of Gothic with the style of the 16th century, which date appears on a richly carved cornice running round the interior of the Chapel.

The chancel screen is handsome, and consists of figures supporting a cornice in the same taste as the upper part of the west door; but of this I had not time to make a correct draw ing.

The Chapel is on the property of Sir Thomas Acland, and was built by an ancestor of the present Baronet, for the benefit of his tenantry. It is well worthy the notice of the antiquary and the artist; and I hope some of your Correspondents will favour me with a more particular account of it than I was able to obtain. E.W.

Mr. URBAN,

Broomfield Hall, Bridgewater. ON a late visit to my respected neighbour, the Rev. John Poole, Rector of Enmore (known for his Village School Improved, "and other works for the education of the poor), my attention was drawn to a pair of images (Pl. II. fig. 1, 2) on whose signification it appeared the ingenuity of several friends had been vainly exercised. They had been in his family about a century, but with their history he is unacquainted. They are of fine alabaster, much yellowed by age; about twenty inches high with their pedestals; and have sustained partial injury.

After some examination, I have little doubt they are representations of Isis and Osiris. But their character is, I believe, unique, and their costume and insignia singular. The sculpture is not Egyptian, as is evident from the ornamental scrolls and festoons of the pedestals, and the general style of the figures. Isis is habited as a Syrian huntress, in a short tunic, not very unlike a boddice and kirtle, which is bound round her waist with a double row of pearls. She is also decorated with a necklace GENT. MAG. May, 1832.

of the same material. In her right hand she holds a bow, while her quiver full of arrows is suspended on her left side. An ample scarf floats over her shoulders. In her left hand she holds the head of her husband Osiris, who has been recently murdered by his brother Typhon, and which she has just discovered on the Phoenician coast, whither the mangled pieces of his corpse have been floated by the current from the Nile, into which they were cast by the assassin. She contemplates this sad spectacle with an aspect of sorrowful bereavement. Her right leg is brought forward over a crocodile, which is much mutilated, having lost both head and tail, but which is the symbol of Typhon, regarded by the Egyptians as the genius of evil, and here introduced to signify the destroyer. Osiris himself is sculp tured as a King in a long stole, over which is a tunic, and a sort of ermined hood, very similar to those worn by old feudal dukes. He has something like a coronet on his head, which is well covered with hair, while, as an Egyptian, he is beardless. In his right hand he holds a temple porch, with its pediment and twisted columns; indicating him as the institutor of divine worship among his subjects; in the same way as royal and prelatical founders of churches were in the middle age. In his left he bears his sceptre, the top of which is broken off; as is part of a scarf to which it was attached. His robe is covered with stars, and bordered and fringed at the hem. He also wears a girdle of pearls. At his feet is Apis, his symbol, garlanded with pearls between the horns, which are curved inwardly, so as almost to form a circle, in obvious allusion to the solar orb, and corresponding with the mythological signification of Isis as the Moon, identified with the Bona Dea of the East, and the huntress Diana of Greece, and particularly of Crete.

The figures may be regarded as astronomical in their design. That Osiris as well as Adonis and Thammuz personified the Sun, is a supposition warranted by ritual similarity of worship. Nor. can I refrain from quoting in this connexion Godwyn's Moses and Aaron, 1. 4: Concerning Adonis, whom sometimes ancient authors call Osiris, there are two things

Nunquamque satis quæsitus Osiris,
Semper enim perdunt, semper et inve-
niunt."
LUCAN.

:

And again: When the Biblienses solemnized the death or loss of Adonis, at that time the Alexandrini wrote a letter this letter was inclosed in an ark of bulrushes; therein they signified that Adonis whom they lamented was found again. This ark, after the performance of certain rites and ceremonies, being committed to the sea forthwith, it was carried by the stream to Byblus: upon the receipt whereof, the lamentation of the women was turned into joy." This is taken from Procopius in Isaiam, ad C. 18.

Selden de Diis Syriis, after mentioning the same circumstance, adds; "Vas illud seu Ollam Caput papyraceum vocat Lucianus libro de Deâ Syria: βιβλινην κεφαλην eamque diebus septem ex Ægypto Byblum, ait, mari ac vento divinitus præparatis, transvehi solitam." Now Byblus was on the Phoenician coast just above Berytus, and the wafting of this vessel of Papyrus by the current from Alexandria, very much corresponds with the legend of Plutarch, that Typhon shut up his brother in a coffer, and threw him into the Nile; that Isis found it on the Phoenician coast, and ordered it to be conveyed to Memphis; that it was intercepted by Typhon, and cut in pieces, which she afterwards recovered, &c.

J. W. MIDDElton.

Mr. URBAN, Bridge-st. Blackfriars. SIR John Sinclair, in his work on Longevity, mentions his having spoke to a person who had spoken to a person who had known a person (Henry Jenkins), who had been at the battle of Flodden Field, 1513. As Sir John is now alive, we may have the account of a battle fought three hundred and twenty years ago at fourth hand, by oral communication.

before the death of Richard Clark, the late estimable Chamberlain of London, who died in his 92d year, about a year ago, I was conversing with him on the length of his reminiscences.* Among other things he was asked what was the most remote historical event he could recollect, in order that in times hereafter we might transmit it by word of mouth, perhaps to inquirers unborn.

The old gentleman paused for a while. He said he well recollected George II. and his Court; but, added he, "that's not much." "But," he continued, "I remember in the days of my youth, we had about the house a man who was present at the first whipping of Titus Oates, and who was fond of describing it; that's a long time ago now."

So indeed it is. Titus was whipped in the year 1685; I therefore have spoken to a gentleman who knew an eye-witness of an event that occurred nearly a century and a half ago, or forty-seven years before the establishment of the Gentleman's Magazine.

M. N.

Mr. URBAN, Burslem, April 14. MY attention has been lately directed to some parts of the immortal work of Pliny, that Encyclopædia of Roman knowledge (if I may so term it), and amongst others, to the second chapter of his 37th book, in which, speaking of the triumph of Pompey on account of his Asiatic expedition, he says that Murrhine vessels (Murrhina) were then first brought into Rome, and that Pompey consecrated six cups of these his oriental spoils to the Capitoline Jupiter. He adds, that vessels of this kind soon passed into use, and had become common appendages to the table and the closet: he speaks, however, of their great value, and of a pitcher which held only three quarts (sextarii), having been sold for eighty sertertia (or about 6207.) Our author then gives some rather whimsical anecdotes about these Murrhine vases, -tells us of a consular worthy, who, from pure regard to one of them, bit a piece out of its rim; that Nero deprived his numerous children of their

A memoir of Mr. Clark, with anecdotes of some of his early reminiscences, will be found in our last volume, part i. pp.