President's Address. 12^ 



remember, first to record his facts with judicial fidelity and impar- 

 tiality ; and secondly to hold his speculations as merely tentative 

 and provisional, subject to be displaced by a wider induction. 



We proceed now to something nearer to what we usually 

 understand by history. Our downs have been the battle-fields and 

 our forests the fastnesses of various races. Dr. Guest gave, when 

 the Archaeological Institute met at Bath, a most interesting account 

 of the acquisition of the Cotswold District by the West Saxons, 

 and its subsequent loss by their own dissensions. This explains 

 how that part of Gloucestershire, though comprised in Mercia, 

 speaks our dialect. He told us that the intermediate vale country, 

 from the Thames to Trowbridge, continued Welsh. I do not know 

 that Welsh names, except that of the river Avon, which is common 

 to many others, survive there. Lydiard has rather a Celtic sound, 

 but I am not etymologist enough to know anything more about it. 

 But the Roman Road across this district from the downs westward 

 ceases to be a highway, just where, if it were to be traversed 

 within the limits of the same society, an artificial road would be 

 most valuable. Much of the district also is, or was, for much has 

 been disafforested, a string of forests — B radon, Pewsham, Woolmore. 

 Now forest has nothing to do with wood, except that woodlands 

 will usually be the last to be settled. But it means Out Land. To 

 compare small things to great, nearly what the Americans would 

 call a territory. Land not yet, at the time when the law assumed 

 its consistency, absorbed into the social system, and therefore, 

 when it came to be settled, governed by perogative. 



In architecture our county is rich. Much of it was early settled 

 and we have good building stone. The result has been that we 

 have a multitude of small churches in which parts of very pure 

 and graceful early structure still remain. Perhaps the oldest and 

 most curious edifice is a small building at Bradford on Avon, which 

 it seems impossible to assign to any period subsequent to the Con- 

 quest, though with all its rudeness there is a feeling in it almost 

 classical, which it is difficult to assign to the Anglo-Saxons, and 

 yet we can hardly think of a still higher antiquity. 

 . The earthworks of Old Sarum and Ludgershall, though by their 



