means allow, and load themselves with
cheap ornaments, although a pound weight of them would not be worth five
shillings.

These enamelled brooches are frequently found in places where Roman
towns once stood. They may, in fact, be said to abound in most museums.
We select two, as examples, from the York Museum, a collection
singularly rich in relics of Roman art. York was one of the most
important stations in England, and here died the Emperor Septimus
Severus, in the year 211, at the age of sixty-five, "worn out with
anxiety, fatigue, and disease," says the Rev. C. Wellbeloved, the
historian of York. He had returned from his successful war in the north,
but had achieved victory with the loss of fifty thousand of his
soldiers. Caracalla, his eldest son, was with him at the time, but
immediately set out for Rome. In the year 304, when the empire was
divided between the Caesars, Galerius, Maximianus, and Constantius
Chlorus, Britain fell to the share of the latter, who immediately came
over, and fixed his residence in York. He died two years afterwards, and
his son, Constantine the Great, by Helena, a British princess, succeeded
him, being proclaimed emperor by the army at York, where he was at the
time of his father's death. The first of these elegant brooches is of
circular form (Fig. 202), like a raised shield divided into several
compartments. The side view placed with it will enable the reader to
understand the arrangement of the pin, which moves freely on a pivot,
the point held by a curve in the lower projecting bar. The second
example (Fig. 203) was found near Bootham bar, and is of more elaborate
design. The raised centre is divided into ornamental compartments,
filled with rich purple and white enamel colours. The point of the pin
is here brought closer to the brooch, as if it had been intended to
fasten a finer kind of material than the preceding one, which from its
width would take in a coarser texture.

[Illustration: Fig. 202.]

[Illustration: Fig. 203.]

The use of enamel colours as enrichments to metal ornaments belongs to
the later days of Rome. Sometimes the work is very coarse, but specimens
occur (though rarely) of extremely delicate execution. It was executed
in what the French antiquaries term the _champ-leve_ manner; that is,
the part to be enamelled was cut, or hollowed, by a graving tool, in the
surface, and then filled with fusible colours, rubbed when cool to a
level surface. This decoratio