processes, and that the British urn is, in truth, a secondary application of the British basket. Mr. Birch, in his learned and most valuable _History of Ancient Pottery_, applies the term “_bascaudæ_,” employed by Juvenal and Martial, not to baskets but to sepulchral urns with basket-like ornamentation.[16] Though most unwilling to hazard a contrary opinion, I still cannot avoid suggesting that such urns, judging from the specimens which have been preserved for our inspection, were not likely to be acceptable ornaments on the tables of the luxurious Romans, accustomed as they must have been to elegant products of high art in the plastic manufactures of Etruria, Greece, and Egypt. It is, I think, greatly more probable that ornamental baskets to contain fruit or flowers were indicated by that name. Though there is good proof that the Britons had acquired much skill in the art of basket making at the time of the occupation of this island by the Romans, it is equally certain that they were ignorant of the art of constructive masonry; for when the legions left the British to their own resources, they advised them to build a wall between the two seas across the island, to keep off their northern enemies. They, indeed, “raised the wall as they had been directed,” but “not of stone _as having no artist capable of such work_, but of sods [which] made it of no use.”[17] From this it is apparent that the British people at that time, and probably for some centuries afterwards, were unaccustomed to the use of building materials of a kind more permanent than wood, wattle-work and clay. Such an arrangement quite accords with the manners of the people and the state of the country at that period, covered as it was with extensive forests, and swamps abounding with osiers. A people of migratory habits, occupied in perpetual warfare, and depending in a great measure on the chase for their food, must have had little inducement to build residences of great durability; and this would happily lead to the more rapid clearing of the country, and consequently to its earlier civilization. Such was the condition of art in Britain and Ireland at the time that the first Christian missionaries commenced their labours in these countries. So signal was their success that Tertullian, writing of his own time (the third century), tells us that “some countries of the Britains that proved impregnable to the Romans are yet subjected to Christ.” It was the custom of those earnest and indefatigable men (so pious in their lives that after their death they were usually honoured with the title of Saint) to place crosses in every place where they succeeded in making converts, or in which they planted a church, chapel, or monastery; and it becomes a question of some interest to ascertain the materials of these early symbols of the Christian faith, which must have been extensively spread over the land.