Dr Hodgkin on the Progress of Ethnology. 129 



terest associated with the same period. He will find there, 

 scarcely less deeply buried, the more varied and beautiful re- 

 lics of Roman occupation ; and, instead of conjecture, he can 

 bring history, inscriptions, coins, and language, as applied to 

 localities, to illustrate this part of his archaeology of London. 

 With equal care he will collect, examine, and, by collateral 

 evidence, elucidate the history and relics of Saxon and Norman 

 London, down to the present time ; and every fragment which 

 can be made to illustrate its fires, its plagues, and its political 

 occurrences, will be highly prized by him, although he may, 

 to a great degree, exclude from his attention the relics of any 

 other place, and possess but an imperfect knowledge even of 

 English history. 



The antiquarian of a wider range will feel a proportionately 

 higher interest in the researches with which these very ob- 

 jects may be connected. He may regard them as a Roman 

 historian, and contemplate the Britons yielding to their in- 

 vaders, and, through Roman writers, become acquainted with 

 the earliest records of the inhabitants of this country. He 

 may be a profound English historian, and regard the history 

 and relics of London with more than local interest, from their 

 illustration of his extensive subject ; or the relics of London 

 may be contemplated by those who study European history 

 through the obscurity of the dark ages, the struggles for the 

 reformation of religion, and the revival of civilization, in which 

 the city of London, and those who have lived and ruled in it, 

 have performed so important a part. 



But let us come to the same objects with a still more com- 

 prehensive archaeological view, or, I would rather say, ethno- 

 logically. 



Though we may not be able to make out any thing from 

 the isolated fragments, which merely attest that there were 

 in this country men of that age and class which are charac- 

 terised by the use of stone knives and flint arrow-heads, and 

 whose uncoffined bones were covered under mounds of earth ; 

 yet a wider survey will prove that these individuals were a 

 part of a more extensive people ; and more careful research 

 in those situations in which successive conquests have pro- 

 duced less change, will lead us to the discovery of other traces 

 of a widely spread race of men, which, by the aid of history, 



VOL. XXXVI. NO. LXXI. JAN. 1844. I 



