ion, and was found
upon the hand of a lady's skeleton, buried with her child in a
sarcophagus discovered in 1846, in a field near Amiens, called "Le Camp
de Caesar;" on two of her fingers were rings, one of which was set with
ten round pearls, the other (here engraved) is of gold, in which is set
a red carnelian, engraved with a rude representation of Jupiter riding
on the goat Amalthea. The child also wore a ring with an engraved stone.
The whole of the decorations for the person found in this tomb proclaim
themselves late Roman work, probably of the time of Diocletian.

[Illustration: Fig. 106.]

[Illustration: Fig. 107.]

In 1841 a curious discovery was made at Lyons of the jewel case of a
Roman lady, containing a complete _trousseau_, including the rings here
engraved. Fig. 106 is of gold; the hoop is slightly ovular, and curves
upward to a double leaf, supporting three cup-shaped settings, one still
retaining its stone, an African emerald. Fig. 107 is also remarkable for
its general form, and still more so for its inscription, VENERI ET
TVTELE VOTVM, explained by M. Comarmond as a dedication to Venus and the
local Tutela, the guardian of the navigators of the Rhine; hence he
infers these jewels to have belonged to the wife of one of these rich
traders in the reign of Severus.

Carrying back our researches to the pre-historic era of our own island,
and searching in the tumuli of the early British chieftain and his
family, we shall discover the utmost simplicity of adornment; not
probably the result of indifference to personal decoration, but simply
to the rudeness of his position. The wild Gaelic hunter, located in the
gloomy fastnesses of wood and morass, had little or no communication
with the southern sea-margin of our isle: and when we find the south
Cymry of Britain much advanced in civilisation, owing to connection with
Belgic Gaul, and Phoenician colonists of Spain, and the Greek
colonists of the Mediterranean, we find the tribes inhabiting the
midland and northern counties still barbaric, and little advanced in the
arts that make life pleasant. Such decoration as they adopted seems to
have originated in the basket-weaving, for which the British Islands
were famous even at Rome, where noble dames coveted these works from the
far-off and mysterious _Cassiteridae_. Plaited or interlaced-work,
resembling the convolutions of wicker and rush, was imitated in threads
of metal; thus circlets for the neck, bracel