In Welsh topography no designation scarcely recurs oftener than Gwent (or, according to Welsh pronunciation, and as it may be written, Cwent) in various modifications, as Gwyndyd, Gwenedd, Gynneth, Gwynne, &c. &c.; and on the authority of Gardnor's History of Monmouthshire (Appendix 14.), under which I willingly cloak my ignorance of the Welsh language, I learn that Gwent or Went is "spelt with or without a G, according to the word that precedes it, according to certain rules of grammar in the ancient British language, and that Venedotia for North Wales is from the same root." The author might certainly have said, "the same word Latinized." But exactly the same affinity or identity of names is found in a locality that suits the place we are in search of: in an arm of the Mediterranean stretching from Greece northwards; viz. in the Adriatic, which had for its earliest name Sirus Venedicus, translated in modern Italian into Golfo di Venezia.

Of the multitudes of authorities for this assumption I need only mention Strabo, who calls the first settlers on its northern end (whence the whole gulph was denominated) [Greek: Everoi]; or Livy, who merely Latinizes the term as Heneti, lib. i. cap. i., "Antenorem cum multitudine Henetum." With the fable of Antenor and his Trojan colony we have at present no further relation. The name alone, and its universality at this locality, is all that we require. I shall now show that we can follow these Veneti (which, that it is a generic name of situation, I must now omit to prove, from the compression necessary for your miscellany) without a break, in an uninterrupted chain, to the north, and to a position that suits Alfred's other locality much more fitting, than the White Sea. The province of Vindelicia would carry us to the Boden See (Lake of Constance), which Pomponius Mela, lib. iii. cap. i. ad finem, calls Lacus Venedicus. This omitting the modern evidences of this name and province in Windisch-Grätz, Windisch-Feistriz, &c. &c., brings us sufficiently in contact with the Slavonic and Wendic people of Bohemia to track the line through them to the two Lausitz, where we are in immediate proximity to the Spree Wald. There the Wends (pronounce Vends) still maintain a distinct and almost independent community, with peculiar manners, and, it is believed, like the gypsies, an elected or hereditary king; and where, and round Lüchow, in Hanover, the few remnants of this once potent nation are awaiting their final and gradual absorption into the surrounding German nations. Whenever, in the north of Germany, a traveller meets with a place or district ending in wits, itz, pitz, &c., wherever situate, or whatever language the inhabitants speak, he may put it down as originally Wendish; and the multitude of such terminations will show him how extensively this people was spread over those countries. Itzenplitz, the name of a family once of great consequence in the Mark of Brandenburg is ultra-Wendish. It will, therefore, excite no wonder that we find, even in Tacitus, Veneti along their coasts and Ptolemy, who wrote about a century and a half later than Strabo or Livy, seems to have improved the terminology of the ancients in the interval; for, speaking of the Sarmatian tribes, he calls these Veneti [Greek: Ouenedai par holon ton Ouenedikon kolpon]. Here we find the truest guide for the pronunciation, or, rather, for the undigammaising of the Latin V and the Welsh W, as Ouenetoi, which is proved in many distant and varying localities. St. Ouen, the Welsh Owen and Evan, and the patron saint of Rouen, no doubt had his name (if he ever existed at all) coined from the French Veneti of Armorica, amongst which he lived; and when foreigners wish to render the English name Edward as spoken, they write Edouard and Robert the Wizzard, the Norman conqueror of Sicily and Apulia, has his name transformed, to suit Italian ears, into Guiscard, and as William into Gulielmi. Thus, therefore, the whole coast of Prussia, from Pomerania, as far, perhaps, as known, and certainly all the present Prussia Proper, was the Sinus Venedicus, Ptolemy's [Greek: kolpon]; and this was also Alfred's Cwen-Sae, for the north. I admit that when Alfred follows Orosius, he uses Adriatic for the Golfo de Venezia, but when he gives us his independent researches, he uses an indigenous name. Professor Porthan, of Abo in Finland, published a Swedish translation, with notes, of the Voyages of Othere and Wulfstan in the Kongl. Vitterhets Historie och Antiquitet Academiens Handlingar, sjette Delen. Stockholm, 1800, p. 37-106., in which he expressly couples Finland with Cwenland; and, in fact, considering the identity of Cwen and Ven, and the convertibility of the F and V in all languages, Ven and Fen and Cwen will all be identical: but I believe he might have taken a hint from Bussæus, who, in addition to his note at p. 13., gives at p. 22. an extract from the Olaf Tryvassons Saga, where "Finnland edr Quenland" (Finland or Quenland) are found conjoined as synonyms. Professor Rask, who gives the original text, and a Danish translation in the Transactions of the Shandinavish Litteratur Selkskab for 1815, as "Otter og Wulfstans Korte Reideberetninger," &c., though laudatory in the extreme of Porthan, and differing from him on some minor points, yet fully agrees in finding the Cwen-Sea within the Baltic: and he seems to divide this inland sea into two parts by a line drawn north and south through Bornholm, of which the eastern part is called the Cwen or Serminde, or Samatian Sea.

Be that as it may, the above is one of a series of deductions by which I am prepared to prove, that as the land geography of Germany by Alfred is restricted to the valleys of the Weichsel (Wisle), the Oder, the Elbe, and the Weser, so the sea voyages are confined to the debouchures of such of these rivers as flow into the Baltic. This would give a combined action of purpose to both well suited to the genius of the monarch and the necessities of an infant trade, requiring to be made acquainted with coasts and countries accessible to their rude navigation and limited commercial enterprise. So prudent a monarch would never have thought of noting down, for the instruction and guidance of his subjects and posterity, the account of a voyage which even now, after an interval of ten centuries of continued nautical improvements, and since the discovery of the compass, is not unattended with danger, nor accomplished in less than a year's time wasted.

WILLIAM BELL, Phil. Dr.

British Archeological Association.

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