My objection to this is not that it is imaginative, but that it is ill suited to its purpose, because it is needlessly cumbrous, and because the Jewel can be traced to Athelney by a much simpler and more obvious process. But while I find it impossible to admit Bp. Clifford’s theory as an interpretation of the Alfred Jewel, seeing that this relic absolutely refuses to be classed with the decorated handles of the _baculi cantorum_, I must add that the question of the ‘æstel’ stands apart. I am by no means prepared to maintain that the explanation of that problem which I have recently offered in _Alfred the Great_ is preferable to Bp. Clifford’s. There is a close affinity between the two explanations; they both rest upon a common basis in the ancient gloss: ‘_Indicatorium_, æstel.’ I interpreted the _indicatorium_ to be a light slab, much like a flat ruler, which was to be brought to bear across the page so as to guide the reader’s eye, and perhaps furnish a rest for his fingers. The Latin term would fit a pointer as well as a flat ruler, and perhaps better. It may therefore well be that in the endeavour to interpret the Jewel, Bp. Clifford has incidentally explained that problematical object which king Alfred sent as a fitting accompaniment with each of the presentation copies of his version of Gregory’s _Pastoral Care_. The remark that the pointer might be fitted to the volume by an arrangement like that now in common use for attaching a pencil to a notebook must, I think, be felt to add a certain persuasive concreteness to his suggestion. Only then, if the ‘æstel’ was a book-pointer with a costly handle, that handle was certainly not fashioned after the manner of the Alfred Jewel, or of its natural associate the minor jewel of Minster Lovel—it was not fashioned with obverse and reverse. A subsequent interpretation by Llewellynn Jewitt, F.S.A., appeared in the _Reliquary_ for October, 1879, vol. xx, p. 66:—‘Many, and very curious as well as various, have been the conjectures as to the use or origin of this remarkable jewel, and of the figure intended to be represented upon it, but it is not worth while to here repeat them. The probability, to my mind, is that it simply formed the head of a sceptre, and that just possibly it might have been ultimately given by Alfred to the head of the monastery founded by himself, to be used as a pastoral staff or staff of office, as was the crosier in later days. The design and the workmanship are of exquisite beauty, and in all respects the jewel is unsurpassed by any other existing example of Anglo-Saxon art.’ Again, this interpretation, like that of Hearne and others, appears to be excluded by the formation of the Jewel with a front and a back. By the rejection of so many hypotheses the field of choice is narrowed, and our path should be so much the clearer to find the true design and use of the Alfred Jewel.