THE METHODS OF ARCHAEOLOGICAL RESEARCH/ 



By Sir Henry Howorth, K. C. I. E., I). C. L., M. P., F. R. S., F. S. A. 



I should forfeit your good o]union of lue if I did not confess to feeling 

 embarrassed by tlie position in which, by your favor, I find myself. The 

 honor and distinction of tilling a chair which has been occupied by so 

 many better men than myself is qualified with every doubt and difiS- 

 culty. When I look round this room I see before me not only those 

 gllted with greater knowledge than I possess, but who have had greater 

 opportunities, and have not had the work which they love continually 

 interfered with by manifold cares and duties. You will accept this as 

 my apology for the disinterested and elementary remarks which I shall 

 impose upon you. 



In selecting a subject on which to address you I have felt it would 

 not be profitable or interesting to merely index the progress of archie- 

 ology during the last twelve months, nor to condense the county his- 

 tory of Shropshire into a necessarily dry and compressed guide to local 

 antiquities which you must know better than I can know. I have 

 thought it more profitable to devote a. little time to considering some of 

 the methods of arclueological research, as they have been enlarged and 

 developed in late years, and to condensing some of the more general 

 conclusions that have been reached, and more especially to illustrate 

 them from my own desultory studies. 



The Archipological Institute has always been a most catholic mother. 

 In her ample lap she has welcomed every kind of fruit which the 

 cornucopia of research has poured out to illustrate the drama of human 

 life. Her aim and object have been, as far as possible, to give a picture 

 of the sometimes gay and sometimes gloomy procession which our race 

 has formed as it has tramped along the avenues of time from the land 

 of mist and cloud to the land of darkness. Every fact, however recorded, 

 whether preserved in words or graven in the universal language 

 with which the ruins of art are enshrined, has been welcome. It has 

 taaght the lesson that history means something more than phdosophy 

 teaching by examples: it means painting the pictures of the past, and 

 piecing together the broken pieces which have escaped its heavy foot 



'Address delivered (as president) at the Shrewsbury meeting of the Archaeological 

 Institute, July 24, 1894, and printed iu The Antiquary, Loudon, September, 1894. 



589 



