26 ALEXANDER GORDON, THE ANTIQUARY. 



favourite residence." In liis dedication to the Duke of Queensberry 

 he expresses his gratitude " for many favours received both at home 

 and abroad;" and his repeated allusions to the architecture of Rome 

 and to the galleries of art of ISTaples, Venice, Florence, and other 

 celebrated collections of continental Europe, as well as to the 

 Raphaels, Titians, Domenichinos, and Vandykes in English collec- 

 tions, prove his familiarity with the works of the great masters as 

 objects of personal study. He was indeed a zealous collector him- 

 self, alike as an antiquary and a coimoisseur of art. He claims for 

 "the Mercury now in London, which I myself had the good fortune 

 to buy for the present Lord Bateman in Italy," an artistic value 

 equal to any statue in Europe ; while we come repeatedly on such 

 references as this : "I carried away from the Fort of Carvoran a 

 small portable altar, Avith an inscription dedicated to the tutelary god 

 Vitorinus. This piece of antiquity I gave to Baron Clerk, and take 

 it to be the same mentioned by Cambden." Again, at Castlestead, 

 the Petriana of later Anglo-Roman antiquaries, in Noi'tluimbei^land ; 

 " here I purchased a small altar dedicated to the god Mars. The in- 

 scription is thus : DEO SANCTO MARTI VENVSTINVS LVPVS VOTVM 



SOLVIT LVBENS MERiTO. This Small altar, which I presented to the 

 Right Honourable the Earl of Hertford, is very singular in giving 

 the epithet Sanctus to the god Mars. Cambden shews an altar with 

 an inscription, Deo sancto Belutucadro, which is supposed to be Mars ; 

 but this confirms the title Sanctus to that god of war, and is a very 

 great curiosity." Had his researches been turned to a collateral 

 branch of inquiry, well calculated to have engaged his attention, he 

 would have learned from a. study of the famous Eugubine Tables, 

 found at the Umbrian town of Iguvium in 1444, that Sancus was 

 the tutelary deity of the Sabines, and Sabus, the son of Sancus, their 

 chief divinity and eponymous, with much else peculiarly tempting to 

 so indefatigable an etymologist as Gordon proves himself to have 

 been. For it was a study he " loved, not wisely, but too well." 



But the prized altar of the Petrianian Mars has beguiled us from 

 the remoter wanderings of the author of the Itinerary. This much is 

 certainly known of him, that in early life he ti-avelled over various 

 parts of the Continent, explored considerable portions of France 

 on foot, visited Germany, resided for years in Italy, and so — 

 along with other fruits of such experience, — was able to confute 

 Hector Boethius and later speculators on the purpose for which 



