CURRENT LITERATURE.
The Church Plate of the County of Northampton. By Christopher A. Markham. (Tebbutt, Northampton.)—It would be well that every county, or at the least every diocese, should have its church plate inventoried and described, as it is here, by some competent person. But it is no small task to do it ; one that requires not only special knowledge, but industry, perseverance, and leisure. Mr. Markham has visited, he tells us, every parish in the county, and has personally inspected the church plate everywhere. One pre-Reformation piece survives, a small silver paten, of the year 1330. This is at Welford, a parish fortunate enough also to possess a comparatively early (1568) silver-gilt cup. There are about a hundred and thirty other sixteenth-century pieces. But the story of robbery in this matter is deplorable. Not to speak of earlier times, since 3843-44, when Archdeacon Owen Davys made an inventory, no less than one hundred and eighty church vessels have disappeared, by far the greater part of them sold, "probably by the incumbents." It is almost enough to make a man a " Liberationist."
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