92 



horse, and tlie flight of the Roman eagle. In connection with all 

 that has been mentioned before, the furnaces, the roads, the 

 restricted vend, the foreign trade — they seem to me to indicate 

 a people who came with many inventions from the metal- 

 liferous east to the metalliferous west — before the Athenians 

 drew silver from Laurion, or the Carthaginians from Iberia. 



To these antient — these Semitic mining processes we have 

 added perhaps steel instruments, and certainly explosive agents ; 

 the ore-hearth still remains, but it is generally yielding to the 

 reverberatory furnace ; silver is no longer obtained by oxidation 

 of some thousand times its weight of lead ; steam blows our 

 furnace fires, rolls and pipes our metals, and flies with iron 

 wings on roads more solid than the Appian way. The world of 

 George Stephenson is much different from that of Julius 

 Agricola ; but some features of the past remain to connect the 

 earliest with the latest aspect of our country : and among these 

 the least altered, and the most instructive, appear to be the 

 mineral products and the mining processes. If by these we 

 judge the great Brigantian tribes which surrounded Isurium, 

 they must be placed far higher on the scale of civilization than 

 the place usually accorded by the Saxon to the Celt. 



I presume to think, indeed, that without full attention to the 

 mining history of Britain, as indicated by fragments in classic 

 authors, and illustrated by processes not yet extinct, the opinion 

 which may be formed of the antient British people would be 

 altogether conjectural, derogatory, and erroneous. 



mines, caJled Wircesworth, on condition that he gives annually, as a rent to Arch- 

 bishop Ceolnoth, lead to the value of 300 shillings, for the use of Christ's Church, 

 Canterbury. On the destruction of the religious houses by the Danes, in 874, it is 

 probable that the lead mines became the property of the Crown. As such they are 

 mentioned in Domesday Book. 



Glover's Derbyshire, vol. i. p. 73. 



