The sarcophagus now at the Guildhall was found at Clapton in 1867; it resembles that last described, and must be very nearly of the same date. It lay east and west, “the Christian orientation,” as Mr. Reginald Smith notes. The cover was attached to the lower part by strong iron straps (cf. Fig. 48). It is described as white marble or oolitic limestone, and there are many sparkling particles in the material. The front, which is 80 in. long, has a portrait bust at the centre in a circle, above a panel in which is the inscription, and the rest is filled with vertical flutings (Fig. 51). [Illustration: FIG. 51. ] The cover is lost, the back and ends are plain, and it probably stood in a building. The portrait relief is curiously early Christian in character. The fluting is exceptionally refined and effective. This is a truly beautiful work, and doubtless if it were in an Italian museum it would be much better known to Englishmen than it is. A full and excellent account of it is given by Price (_London and Middlesex Archæol. Soc. Proceed._, vol. iii.), in which he compared it with some tombs in the Lateran Museum, showing that it is in the style of early Christian monuments _c._ 340-50. (The same paper contains descriptions of several plain stone coffins.) The inscription on the Clapton tomb was very short, hardly more than names, and it does not seem to have contained any expression of faith. The Haydon Square tomb had no inscription. This reticence is characteristic. “The historical inscriptions of this age can be counted on the fingers of one hand.... It is curious to find a noteworthy lack of ordinary sepulchral inscriptions of private persons in the fourth century; there are very few Christian tombs, but it is much more surprising to find a lack of those of the ordinary heathen type. Conceivably fourth-century tombs were handiest for the Saxon invader” (Sir C. Oman, _England before the Norman Conquest_). Christian inscriptions are very few in France also; there are not, I believe, half a dozen of the fourth century existing. This tomb and the other are good examples of the skilful way in which forms were obtained in a block of stone without cutting to waste; observe how the mouldings in Figs. 49 and 50 lie just on the surfaces. This is a lesson for our own days.