delivering a small figure, as it were a soul, out of the mouth of the
dragon. This is carved on the upper side of the massive lid of a stone
coffin. It was discovered about forty years ago, and it may be seen in
the vestry within the Norman chapter-house, where it is masoned into the
wall over the chimney-piece.


BURIALS.

The Saxon graves have yielded many illustrative objects, especially
weapons and personal ornaments, pottery, and glass.[37]

The Saxon graves were first systematically explored by Bryan Faussett,
of Heppington, in Kent (b. 1720--d. 1776); who was called by his
contemporaries "the British Montfaucon." He is unequalled for the extent
of his excavations, and the distinctness of his well-kept chronicle.
After him, in the next generation, came an interpreter, who was also a
great excavator; James Douglas, author of "Nenia Britannica," 1793. The
Faussett collection is in Liverpool, the Douglas collection (most of it)
in Oxford.

In more recent times the general accuracy of the results has been
established by means of comparative researches. The tumuli in the old
mother country of the Saxons have been examined, and their affinity with
our Saxon graves has been determined beyond question; while a parallel
comparison has also been instituted between the Frankish graves in
France, and the ancestral Frankish graves in old Franconia over the
Rhine. Thus it is well known what interments are really Saxon.

The chronology of the varieties of interment is not, however, so