186 SUPPOSED INSCRIPTION UPON THE FONT AT WILNE. 
possible to turn it the right way up the whole thing might be 
determined. It is a laborious business working at it upside down, 
hanging over it in the attempt to see the most decayed parts in 
their natural position. My illustration inverts the font. 
This valuable relic is evidently a portion of a very remarkable 
pillar or column, which had a tier of six panels containing dragons 
and birds, admirably designed and executed, and now all 
complete ; above them was another tier of six human figures, the 
whole probably representing the triumph of Christianity over the 
old religion. The girth is 82 inches at top and 77 at bottom; 
height about 23 inches. The figures may have been the 
Evangelists, St. Chad, and our Lord. The column has at some 
early time been broken off between the ankles and the knees of 
the figures, and then turned upside down and hollowed to form a 
font. It will be seen that in some cases the bottom of the panel 
is arched, as well as the top, so that to a casual observer the effect 
of the sculpture as now inverted is that of a somewhat bewildering 
mass of detail in panels with round heads. But for this, it would 
long ago have been seen that the sculpture is upside down. 
Those who converted it into a font may have purposely availed 
themselves of this feature, cutting away the human figures, which 
would have looked ridiculous standing on their heads. The 
twelve bold characters of the inscription are the inverted feet and 
ankles of the six figures. In one case the two feet and ankles and 
the hem of the garment resemble the 9 and “| combined in the 
name of the Palmyrene BaRate whose monument to his wife and 
freed-woman Regina the Catuallaunian was found at South Shields 
in 1878. Hence the “‘inscription’’ has been supposed to: be 
possibly Palmyrene. There seems less reason for the other 
supposition, that it was in runes. The details of the sculpture are 
very curious, notably the bold incisions in the columns carrying 
the arches of the panels, giving very much the effect of the deep 
grooving of the pillars at Durham, The arches themselves are 
similarly grooved. This method of treatment is so far as I know 
without parallel on early stones, and its bearing on the ‘ Norman ” 
grooving deserves consideration. At the head, the columns 
