Laura Valentine

“ TREASURE TROVE, AT HOME AND ABROAD.
“To search as for hid treasures” is an expression which loses much of its strong significance when it falls on English ears. It is so long since invasion or oppression rendered hiding in the earth necessary, that the idea of such concealed wealth or of earnest search for it has died out amongst us. ”

“ Very recently, however, a treasure trove has occurred even in our long-tilled, tunnel-burrowed England. A month or two ago, a labourer, ploughing at Mountfield, in Sussex, raised to the surface a chain of golden links a yard long, attached to each end of which was a horn or “trumpet,” as he called it, of the same precious metal. The peasant showed it to his master, who gave no directions about it, only observing that he did not know what it was ”

“ But the chief beauty of this remarkable crown is the fringe of jewelled letters, which, as we have already said, records the offering it by the king. Four golden chains attached to the upper margin (united by an elegant foliated ornament enriched with pendent pearls and emeralds, and surmounted by a knob of rock crystal elaborately carved and polished) served doubtless to hang it up in the church.
Within the crown, suspended by a long slender chain, is a Latin cross, which hangs a little lower than the letter-fringe. It is set with six fine sapphires and eight pearls in very high relief ”

“ In Denmark, a wise and liberal policy with regard to treasure trove is securing to Copenhagen a museum of national relics such as no other nation possesses.
A peasant finding any antiquities on his land, receives the full value for his prize. ”

“ A man came to him, and with much secresy offered him a splendid armlet, a massive serpent coil of great value, which he said he had found in his own field, and which he wished to sell privately, as otherwise it would be taken from him. ”

“ In the days of the Eastern emperors the children “born in the purple” were permitted to wear the royal insignia, and the fashion of Constantinople appears to have been followed by the Visigoth monarchs; who were the more likely to imitate the Byzantine mode at this time, from the fact that they had only worn crowns for sixty years when Reccesvinthus succeeded to the kingdom—Lewvigildus being the first Gothic king of Spain who possessed a royal diadem, and he reigned in 586 ”