THE BRITISH PUGNACES. 57 



collection of Mr. Jas. Tassie, of Leicester Square, and was 

 from a Cornelian with Cybele mounted on a lion. It is very 

 similar, only much less faulty in execution, and whether 

 Britannia seated on the lion had not its origin from Cybele 

 (The Tellus ov Ceres of Hesiod v. 130^ is very doubtful, for it is 

 very suggestive of affinity of the Druidical religion, that Cybele 

 is at times represented crowned with the leaves of the oak. 

 Vide ^Enid vii.-i35- 



I thus venture my opinion against that of Whitaker, feeling 

 I have too good a case to risk damaging my evidence of what 

 the British mastiff was by using doubtful matter, although it 

 is as well to mention this, for at any time it may be advanced 

 as circumstantial mastiff history, and in this history of the 

 mastiff I wish to refute any inaccurate statements made by 

 those writing on the breed. 



It is a recorded saying of the late President Garfield that 

 " We cannot study nature profoundly without bringing our- 

 selves into communion with the spirit of art," and from the 

 Potter's art we get the earliest examples of the form of the 

 mastiff, while Britain was under the Roman dominion. 



The Britons understood the art, and practiced the labours 

 of pottery, and many of their vessels have descended to us. 

 The progress of art however was unequal to that on the 

 Continent, and it w r as under the tutorship of Roman or Roman 

 Frisian masters, that the Britons learnt to glaze and embellish 

 their arms and other vessels with figures and carvings, and 

 it was not until between 90 and 100 A.D. that art and 

 literature spread to any extent in Britain ; thus we can form 

 a fairly accurate estimate of about the age of the pottery 

 bearing forms of the British mastiff. 



