GOLD GORGETS OR LUNETTES. 139 



as, I doubt not, our Queen Elizabeth did when she reviewed her 

 troops at Tilbury on the occurrence of a later invasion. 



It is very probable that golden relics, of this type, have before 

 been found in Cornwall, but at a time when Prideaux Brunes 

 were scarce in the county, and the melting-pot supplied the defici- 

 ency. Mr. Davies Gilbert tells us in his Parochial History, under 

 Talland (Vol. 4, p. 33), of the disinterment of a " gold chain " and 

 "brass instruments like hatchets," (probably celts), near Little 

 Larnick, and not far from a mound on Looe Down. The chain 

 had been afterwards used as a whip, 18 inches long, to drive cows, 

 and was eventually sold for <£3 to a jeweller at Dock, who called 

 it " Corsican gold." I hope that those examples of successful 

 researches may not be lost in this generation, and that liberal re- 

 muneration may help to intercept our relics and rescue them from 

 the crucible. 



In our inquiry respecting the native country of the lunar 

 ornaments, several questions present themselves to us. 



Are they of foreign manufacture and imported ] or, are they 

 of home workmanship — that is, the veritable production of the 

 earlier inhabitants of these Islands 1 If of British or aboriginal 

 produce, are the Scoti of Ireland to have the credit of them 1 or, 

 was the goldsmith a native of parts on this side the Irish Channel ? 



If we attribute the work to foreign art, imported through the 

 medium of foreign commerce, we shall not be destitute of plausible 

 grounds for our conjecture. We all know, from data beginning 

 with Caesar's earliest notice of us down to the present day, that 

 Britain must have been ijpom early times in some sort dependent 

 on foreign commerce. In truth, it has never ceased to be so. 

 There are no strong grounds for ascribing to the peoples and tribes 

 of this country anything like commercial activity or the refine- 

 ments of art, before the Roman settlement in it. Boadicea need 

 not have purchased her golden collar from any British Storr and 

 Mortimer, or any Keltic Emanuel. Our own Birmingham factories 

 are to this day engaged in making, for export, beads, showy rings, 

 bracelets, and trinkets, to conciliate the good will and good ofiices 

 of many an unskilled native of another hemisphere and of islands 

 as distant as our antipodes. 



The Tyrian and Sidonian traders were largely so engaged 

 with Europe. The glyptic and plastic arts, the manufacture of 



