MONUMENTAL ART IN EARLY ENGLAND, ETC. 213 



was accounted for by the Lecturer. The fact was new to him 

 that there was such a great difference in age between the North- 

 umbrian crosses and the stone crosses of Ireland and Scotland. 

 It would seem from the dates, historically fixed by the learned 

 Bishop, that the English crosses ante-dated the others by upwards 

 of 200 years. The ingenuity shown by Bishop Browne in deciphering 

 the Kunes and Ogam inscriptions was very remarkable, and his 

 explanations gave great interest to the beautiful photographs they 

 had seen. He understood that there were gentlemen present who 

 had devoted much attention to the study of these monuments, 

 and he would therefore request them to take part in the discussion 

 which was to follow. 



Mr. Rouse said : — The Ogam characters are at least as old as 

 the Roman domination of Britain, for at the Reading Museum 

 you may see them, as I have done, inscribed on a monument that 

 was dug up from Silchester, an entirely Roman city, which bears 

 not a trace of Saxon occupation. The monument is a cone with 

 a rough base, in all about a yard high, up which, across and on 

 either side of a long upright line, runs the inscription ; and this was 

 clearly read by Professor Rhys as the name of a chieftain, mic, or 

 son of, another chieftain. 



If the Druids, as Bishop Browne says, used the Ogam characters 

 as signs with their hands before they wrote them, we can under- 

 stand how Julius Csesar imagined that they did not write at all, 

 but imparted all their knowledge to their disciples by word of 

 mouth lest it should leak out to the mass of the people. 



In Cornwall one meets with still older monuments of Christianity 

 than the beautiful Runic crosses reproduced, described and 

 deciphered for us by Bishop Browne. At St. Colombs, a village 

 called after Columba, beside its old parish church I have seen the 

 head of a stone completely cut out in the form of the Greek letter X, 

 the first in the name (Ef) t i 18 1 0 13, surrounded with a circle, and again 

 a broad stone post, about 8 feet high, stated to be more ancient, 

 with a broad X near the top of it ; and I learnt in the neighbourhood 

 that there are a good number of stones so carved in Cornwall, and 

 that they are believed to have been set up as rallying marks for 

 listeners to the Gospel of Christ and the Word of God preached 



