of prosecuting such researches; and though M. Mongez, in his report to
the National Institute[66], eulogized the map as exact, and the memoir
as excellent, they were both of them extremely faulty. It was reserved
for M. Louis Dubois, of whom I shall have occasion to speak again before
I close this letter, to repair the omissions and rectify the mistakes of
M. Hubert, and he has done it with unremitting zeal and extraordinary
success. The researches of this gentleman, among the remains of Neomagus
Lexoviorum, have already brought to light a large number of valuable
medals, both in silver and bronze, as well as a considerable quantity of
fragments of foreign marble, granite, and porphyry, some of them
curiously wrought. The most important of his discoveries has been
recently made: it is that of a Roman amphitheatre, in a state of great
perfection, the grades being covered only by a thin layer of soil, which
a trifling expence of time and labor will effectually remove.

Such vestiges prove that Neomagus must have been a place of importance;
and, like the other Gallo-Roman cities, it would probably have
maintained its honors under the Franks; but about the middle of the
fourth century, the Saxons, swarming from the mouths of the Elbe and
Weser, laid waste the coasts of Belgium and of Neustria, and finally
established themselves in that portion of northern Gaul called the
_Secunda Lugdunensis_, which thence obtained, in the _Notitia Imperii_,
the title of the _Littus Saxonicum_.--In the course of these incursions,
it is supposed that Neomagus was utterly destroyed by the invaders. None
of the medals dug up within the precincts of the town, or in its
neighborhood, bear a later date than the reign of Constantine; and,
though the city is recorded in the _Itinerary of Antoninus_, no mention
of it is to be found in the curious chart, known by the name of the
_Tabula Peutingeriana_, formed under the reign of Theodosius the Great;
so that it then appears to have been completely swept away and