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silence almost morose. It is now thirty-three years since his death, 

 and no one (so far as I know) has glanced at his character, reviewed 

 his works or noted the chief incidents of his life. It is under these 

 circumstances, and in the presence of this omission only, that I 

 have ventured to undertake to say what I know about tliis 

 gentleman, poet, artist, scholar, and dutiful country pi-iest, and to 

 show of how much more I am ignorant. It is not my purpose to 

 support his opinions, nor to condemn them, but to make the Club 

 acquainted with them so far as I can. To persons whose natui-al 

 genius leads them to dislike all but the plainest positive reasonings, 

 much of what Mr. Skinner wrote and said will appear too fanciful, 

 and his exploded errors hardly worth recalling. There are minds, 

 however, which feel that in our oldest history, far beyond the reach 

 of chronicles and traditions — where a few names or a few stones are 

 all that remain to help the ethnological historian, that in these 

 misty regions the veil of antiqtiity is more likely to be lifted by the 

 hajDpy guess of an imaginative mind, taking a sort of bird's-eye view 

 of the labours of other explorers, than through that diligent pursuit 

 of minute evidence by which the secret stories of more modem 

 times have been discovered. As an illustration I may mention 

 that so early as the year 181.5 I find it was known to Mr. Skinner 

 and his fiieuds "that a separation and distinction can be made of 

 the higher and lower periods of British sepulture," an important 

 truth which has in our time received a perfect demonstration. 

 When your attention is asked to Mr. Skinner's opinions, I do not 

 mean to ask more than that a man of singularly tasteful scholar- 

 ship, who in days when Antiquarian Field Clubs were not, occupied 

 his leisure in the pursuits which occupy our leisure, should be 

 remembered by us, who may in some sense be considered as his 

 successors and heirs to a delightful field of observation. Half a 

 century hence some one will perhaps recall our days to a strange 

 audience in this very room. 



John Skinner, afterwards F.S.A. and Rector of Camerton, was 

 the son of Russel Skinner, of Newtown, in Hampshire, Esquire, and 

 was born in 1770 at the old Hall at Claverton, where his mother, 

 who had been a Miss Page of Tottenham, resided. AVhen eight 

 years old, the duel fought close by between Bany and Rice made 



