The President's Address. 127 
dictionary to assist the study. What it really comprehends in its 
popular sense is “ A general inquiry of all that men have known and 
done in every mode of life, since the earliest known epochs of history.” 
What your first President (Mr. Scrope) stated to be the object of 
this Society was, “ Mor the purpose of encouraging and promoting 
to the utmost possible degree the study of the civil and ecclesiastical 
history of the antiquities of our county, together with its numerous 
objects of natural history; for disseminating as far as possible, 
through all ranks of society, a knowledge of every fact tending to 
illustrate these interesting subjects ; and for the formation of a Museum 
Jor preserving objects of interest connected with these subjects.” 
So here you have the large general scope of archeology—and the 
more limited and special sphere of the object of the Wiltshire 
Society—the one general, this practically local. Of all the great 
branches of human knowledge, history is that upon which most has 
been written, and which has been most popular ; aud the confidence 
in history, and the success of historians, certainly of modern 
historians, is mainly based on the increased knowledge of the past, 
which increased industry and research have afforded. Antiquities 
of every kind have been examined, the sites of ancient cities have 
been laid bare, coins dug up and deciphered, inscriptions copied, 
alphabets restored, hieroglyphics interpreted, and in some cases long- 
forgotten languages re-constructed and re-arranged ; the laws which . 
regulate the changes of human speech have been discovered, and by 
them the most obscure periods in the early migration of nations have 
been elucidated. But notwithstanding all this, the study of the 
movements of man is still in its infancy as compared with the study 
of the movements of nature ; and it is only as nations advance more 
and more to a high state of culture that they are anxious and studious 
in these matters. Every branch of archeological research, however 
humble, tends to show more and more clearly the history of man’s 
progress and the developement of his civilization. Domestic archi- 
_ tecture, military architecture, ecclesiastical architecture, roads, fences, 
_ bridges, customs, sepulchral mounds, traditionary laws, and even the 
names of plants, all are worthy of our attention, and each'of them 
expressive of some distinct phase of society. Take, for instance, 

