OF SELBORNE. 517 



that were rejected became current, and passed for 

 farthings at the petty shops. Of those that we saw, 

 the greater part were of Marcus Aurelius, and the 

 Empress Faustina, his wife, the father and mother of 

 Commodus. Some of Faustina were in high relief, and 

 exhibited a very agreeable set of features,, which pro- 

 bably resembled that lady, who was more" celebrated 

 for her beauty than for her virtues. The medallions in 

 general were of a paler colour than the coins. To 

 pretend to account for the means of their coming to 

 this place would be spending time in conjecture. The 

 spot, I think, could not be a Roman camp, because it 

 it commanded by hills on two sides ; nor does it show 

 the least traces of intrenchments ; nor can I suppose 

 that it was a Roman town, because I have too good an 

 opinion of the taste and judgment of those polished 

 conquerors to imagine that they would settle on so 

 barren and dreary a waste 3 . 



LETTER II. 



THAT Selborne was a place of some distinction and 

 note in the time of the Saxons we can give most 

 undoubted proofs. But, as there are few, if any, 

 accounts of villages before Domesday, it will be best 

 to begin with that venerable record. " Ipse rex tenet 

 Selesburne. Eddid regina tenuit, et nunquam geldavit. 

 De isto manerio dono dedit rex Radfredo presbytero 

 dimidiam hidam cum ecclesia. Tempore regis Edwardi 

 et post, valuit duodecim solidos et sex denarios ; modo 



3 It is far from improbable that the heaps of coins were the spoils of 

 some successful attack on the invaders, in which the military chest (as it 

 might now be called) fell into the hands of the native conquerors, and 

 was carried away by them into their fastness : and that there, in their 

 haste, it was lost. It may even have been rejected as unworthy of notice, 

 when it was ascertained that its contents were coins of the baser metal 

 only. E. T. B. 



