The female dress, as before observed, underwent little or no change. The British gwn, from whence comes the modern "gown,' ,"descended to the middle of the thigh, the sleeves barely reaching to the elbows: it was sometimes confined by a girdle. Beneath this a longer dress reached to the ankles. The hair was trimmed after the Roman fashion; and upon the feet, when covered, were sometimes worn shoes of a costly character, of which we know the Romans themselves to have been fond. An ex tween two large glass urns or vases Fig. 23. each containing a considerable quantity of burnt bones. They were of superb and expensive workmanship, being made of fine purple leather, reticulated in the form of hexagons all over, and each hexagonal division worked with gold, in an elaborate and beautiful manner. Many passages in ancient writers allude to the great attention paid by the Roman ladies and soldiers to the ornaments upon their shoes, which were as rich and costly as the circumstances of the wearer would permit. Philopœmon, in recommending soldiers to give more attention to their warlike accoutrements than to their common dress, advises them to be less nice about their sandals, and more careful in observing that their greaves were kept bright, and fitted well to their legs. In the collection of London Antiquities formed by Mr. Roach Smith, now deposited in the British Museum, are many very curious specimens of Roman sandals. They have been engraved in that author's "Illustrations of Roman London," who says of them, "We can look upon these sandals as being nearly in the same condition as when they covered feet which trod the streets of Roman London: and probably they are the only specimens extant; for although much has been written on the various coverings of the feet of the ancients, the illustrations have been supplied from representations, and not from existing remains." This work, by its lucid and learned description and large variety of illustrative engravings, affords the most valuable record of London and its inhabitants during Roman rule. For information on the subject of the Romans in Britain the reader is referred to the works of Messrs. Roach Smith, Coote, Wright, Price, among many others. N THE ANGLO-SAXONS AND DANES. On the first appearance of the Saxons in Britain, they were in a state far less civilized than the inhabitants, upon whom the example of Roman life had not been unproductive of improvement. The pagan Saxons were fully aware of the advantages offered by a settlement in Britain, and so far improved their time, that in a few years after the final departure of the Romans, about A.D. 450, they obtained the mastery of Kent, and there founded their first kingdom. However the Romans may have modified the Saxon costume, it retained much of the national character. An aureus of Domitian, in the cabinet of James Cave Jones, Esq., F.S.A., represents a Sarmatian with what may be considered as the prototype of our coat, waistcoat, and trousers. Other coins and sculptures show the marked peculiarities of the costume of the Germanic peoples. Of the early Saxon military and civil costume the graves give the only reliable indications. The broad bands or belts, with rich buckles, often elaborately worked, gilt, and damascened, the enormous fibule of various forms, must have been conspicuous appendages to the dress, yet no painter has ever recognized them. The ladies also wore rich fibulæ, gold and silver pendants, and chatelaines from which were suspended mimic implements and keys, the last of which, indicative of household trustworthiness and domestic supremacy, have only during the present century been laid aside by ladies. The chief works of reference are the "Archæologia," the "Inventorium Sepulchrale," and the "Collectanea Antiqua." It is in the Kentish barrows' that we find the 1 This term, applied to these early graves, is the genuine ancient one. In the Anglo-Saxon poem of "Beowulf," one of the earliest of these effusions, we have the word "beorh" used for it; it literally signifies a mound, or hill (like its modern derivative bury),—these graves being most interesting relics of these early people, and of the late Romano-Britons. Iron swords, knives, heads of spears, relics of shields, are found in the graves of the males; earrings, beads, fibulæ, and domestic implements in those of the women. The engraving here given is copied from a plate in Douglas's "Nenia Britannica," and represents one of the most ancient of the Kentish barrows, opened by him in the Chatham Lines, Sept., 1779; and it will enable the reader at once to understand the structure of these early graves, and the interesting nature of their contents. The grave contained the body of a male adult, tall and well-proportioned, holding in his right hand a spear, the shaft of which was of wood, and had perished, leaving only the iron head, fifteen inches in length, and at the bottom a flat iron stud (a), having a small pin in the centre, which would appear to have been driven into the bottom of the spear-handle; an iron knife lay by the right side,1 with the remains of the original handle of wood. Adhering to its under side were very discernible impressions of decayed coarse linen cloth, showing that the warrior was buried in full costume. A piled high above the ground to a greater or less altitude, according to the importance of the deceased interred therein. Fig. 24. d Some etymologists derive the name "Saxon," applied to these people, from the seax, or short sword, or knife with which they were armed. case of wood appears to have held this knife, in the same manner as the dagger already engraved at p. 7 was protected. An iron sword is on the left side, thirty-five and a quarter inches in its entire length, from the point to the bottom of the handle, which is all in one piece, the woodwork which covered the handle having perished; the blade is thirty inches in length and two in breadth, flat, doubleedged, and sharp-pointed, a great portion of wood covering the blade, which indicates that it was buried in a scabbard, the external covering being of leather, the internal of wood. A leathern strap passed round the waist, from which hung the knife and sword, and which was secured by the brass buckle (b), which was found near the last bone of the vertebræ, or close to the os sacrum. Between the thighbones lay the iron umbo of a shield, which had been fastened by studs of iron, four of which were found near it, the face and reverse of one being represented at c. A thin plate of iron (d), four and a half inches in length, lay exactly under the centre of the umbo, having two rivets at the end, between which and the umbo were the remnants of the original wooden (and perhaps hide-bound) shield;' the rivets of the umbo having apparently passed through the wood to this plate as its bracer or stay, which also formed the handle of the shield, as in the British one engraved p. 8. In a recess at the feet was placed a vase of red earth, slightly ornamented round the neck with concentric circles and zigzag lines.2 1 Their shields, as well as the shafts of their spears, were of wood, generally linden, which was of a yellow colour. The poem of "Beowulf" speaks of " the broad shield, yellow rimmed" (sidne scyld geolorand); it is sometimes called a " war-board" (hilde-bord); and in another instance we are told: 66 'hond-rong gefeng, geolwe linde." "he seized his shield, In the fragment of Judith (Thorpe, " Annal.," p. 137), we are told, "Warriors stepped to the battle bedecked with boards with concave lindens." 2 A yet more interesting example is given in Mr. Roach Smith's "Collectanea Antiqua," vol. vi., pl. xxviii. It is that of a lady richly adorned with fibulæ and beads, of the former of which there are five, a crystal globe mounted in silver, and having other insignia of high posi |