We may congratulate ourselves in the acquisition of the coins from the grave at Sarre, because they constitute means whereby we may decide upon the approximate date of the interment; and here is a case in point, of .the importance of authentication in such discoveries. Had the coins been separated from the circumstances attending their exhumation from the grave, their value as testimony on date of interment would have been worthless; and the other objects which accompanied them might possibly have been assigned to an earlier period than that to which they must now be placed. It is obvious that the interment must be either coeval with, or posterior to the time of the latest of the princes in whose names the coins were struck.
   Three of the coins bear the effigies and superscription of emperors of the East, Mauricius and Heraclius; and the fourth, that of Chlotaire II. of France. Mauricius reigned from A.D. 582 to A.D. 602; Heraclius from 

A.D. 610 to A.D. 641; and Chlotaire II. from A.D. 613 to A.D. 628
   THE COINS of the Eastern Empire were commonly imitated in France under the Merovingian princes, and constituted part of the legalized currency; and these pieces are of that class, being copied, and not very accurately, from the coins struck by Mauricius and Heraclius. Admitting, as probable, that they were coined at some time during the long reign of Chlotaire II., who was contemporary with Heraclius, but who died long before him, we cannot well assign the time of their deposit in the Saxon grave at Sarre to a date much earlier than the middle of the seventh century, while at the same time it may have been some years later. It will be seen by reference to an extract from my summary of former discoveries (printed in the Introduction to the ‘Inventorium Sepulchrale’) that these coins found at Sarre decide that some, at least; of the Saxon remains discovered