JOHN HORSLEY was the first and mightiest of the three—is it too much to say that he was the father of the science of Archæology? Born in an unknown locality of this county, receiving his elementary education at Newcastle, his academical at Edinburgh, he spent the greater portion of his life as the pastor of a Presbyterian congregation in Morpeth. His tastes, and great familiarity with the classics, induced him to devote his leisure hours to the study of the antiquities of Northumberland. Had he conceived that the Britannia Romana would have cost him one-third of the time which its execution required, the world would never have seen it. Having embarked in the undertaking, he felt it his duty to make it as good as he could. How severe his toils, how great his pecuniary sacrifices, how ardent his aspirations after emancipation from his self-imposed task, in order that he might entirely devote himself to his sacred calling, who shall tell? The thought that his flock might eventually be no losers, that his family and his own fair fame might gain by the enterprise, buoyed him up in his course. On 2 Jan. 1731-2, he put the finishing stroke to his labours, the dedication of his work bearing that date. Now he might hope to reap the fruits of his toils—the enjoyment of rest, such as the wearied only know, the congratulations of friends, the approbation of the learned, the replenishment of his exhausted means. None of these fruits he enjoyed. He can scarcely have had the satisfaction of casting his eyes upon a completed copy of his work. The ink of his dedication was hardly dry when he was summoned to the unseen world. Respecting him who recorded the mighty doings of the Romans in Britain, the parish clerk of Morpeth made the following entry in the church-yard calendar:—Buried, ‘_1731-2, Jan. 15_, Mr. John Horsley.’ ‘Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.’ As regards the honours or enjoyments of this world, he died an utterly unrequited man. Even of that bubble, posthumous fame, an attempt was made to rob him. Warburton, in his Vallum Romanum, transfers Horsley ‘in bulk’ to his pages—he even copies, without alteration, the opinions which Horsley expresses in the first person. The honest Hutton often quotes the ‘judicious Warburton,’ little knowing whose the feathers are which he so justly admires. The precise spot where his remains rest is unknown. He whose lot it was to interpret, after the lapse of many centuries, the throbbings of natural affection over departed relatives in the heathen breast, had no one to erect over him, though a Christian minister, a memorial that should outlive a single century. Even the parish clerk, in his attachment to the altar and the throne, denies him, in the sepulchral register, the title which courtesy, at least, would have accorded him. _Requiescat in pace!_