2. Another very fine inscription is on the tomb front of Valerius at Westminster Abbey. The letters are smaller, the stone is rather decayed on the surface, and it is not seen in a good light. The beauty of the lettering and spacing has consequently hardly been remarked. Here the lines are longer, and the letters seem to follow one another rhythmically, trippingly; it is an extraordinarily vivid and elegant piece of work, which, I think, should be dated in the second century A.D. The letters A M and N have cross touches at the apex of the angles, and the stops are little triangles as in the inscription before described. Here it can just be seen that lines were ruled (scored) on the stone as guides for ranging the letters (Figs. 119 and 122). [Illustration: FIG. 122. ] 3. In the London Museum is a small tablet of white marble, which has similar lines, lettering and stops, and must be nearly of the same age. I give in Fig. 123 a very rough sketch of this excellent little slab. I have felt some doubt as to whether this was a London antiquity indeed, but the many resemblances to other inscriptions have fully convinced me that it is. 4. At the Guildhall there is another small slab, having only a few letters, but these of fine early style (Fig. 124). Both these little tablets and others probably were set on the wall of some burial chamber of the Columbarium type. [Illustration: FIG. 123. ] [Illustration: FIG. 124. ] [Illustration: FIG. 125. ] 5. Another inscription of much the same character, but in smaller letters, is that on the hexagonal pedestal in the Guildhall Museum, of which a sketch was given in an earlier part. This provides an example of a group of tied letters (Fig. 125). The writers of Roman inscriptions allowed themselves much freedom in contracting words, in setting a small letter within a big one, as in Fig. 119, and in combining two or three letters together. In Fig. 126 I have noted one or two other examples not all from London. [Illustration: FIG. 126. ] 6. In a fragment of inscription from Greenwich Park at the British Museum, the letters were much compressed, and many of them were linked together (Fig. 127). [Illustration: FIG. 127. ] It is difficult to draw out any general rules of form and spacing; generally o and c were very round in form, N of square proportion, and M wider than a square. The round letters were usually thickened, not where the curves would touch vertical tangents, but a little under and over, just as is natural in writing the letters. The loops of D and R do not become horizontal at top and bottom, but bend freely. A, N and M usually have square terminations at the upper angles. Initial letters are not larger than the rest. [Illustration: FIG. 128. ] [Illustration: FIG. 129. ]