DORCHESTER.

(_For the Mirror._)


St. Peter's church, Dorchester, is a handsome structure. There is a
traditional rhyme about it which imports the founder of this church
to have been Geoffery Van.

"Geoffery Van
With his wife Anne
And his maid Nan
Built this church."


But there was long since dug up in a garden here a large seal, with
indisputable marks of antiquity, and this inscription:--"Sigillum
Galfridi de Ann." It is therefore supposed, with some reason, that
the founder's name was Ann.

A great number and variety of Roman coins have been dug up in this town,
some of silver, others of copper, called by the common people, King
Dorn's Pence; for they have a notion that one king Dorn was the founder
of Dorchester.

HALBERT H.

* * * * *