349 



of sorrow and sympathy exprcf3sed throughout the countiy to defer 

 the opening meeting. A favourable change having taken place in 

 H.R.H.'s health, the first paper was read by Dr. Hunter on Jan. 

 3rd, 1872. (Vide ^.281.) 



The chair was taken by the President, the Rev. Leonard 

 Blomefield (the new name lately assumed by him instead of 

 Jenyns), who opened the proceedings by an allusion to the cause 

 of the postponement, and announced that a portrait of the geologist, 

 William Smith, together with his memoirs by Professor Phillips, 

 had been presented to the Club by Mr. Kemp. Mr. Blomefield 

 said that so far as his recollections went the portrait was a very 

 good likeness. 



The Chairman, in tendering a vote of thanks to Dr. Hunter, 

 spoke of the advantage of local biography, which was of great 

 value to literature, and the study of it came legitimately within 

 the province of a Club like the present one. 



The Rev. G. W. Newnham supplemented the paper by some 



details which were in his knowledge as an old personal friend of 



Mr. Skinner, for it was his privilege to have had the nm of his 



house for many years. In the Fourteenth Book of Tacitus 



Camulodunum was described as being sine munimentis, and 



Camerton was entirely open and un^jrotected, so that in this 



character of openness was fulfilled one of the conditions, besides the 



phrase which cannot well be got over, " Mare quod spectat ad 



Hiberniam." Mr. Skinner always used to say that it was the place 



which had made him what he was, and he went to Camerton with 



no bias for any particular theory. His inscriptions were numerous 



— English and Latin verse and prose decked water-trough and seat ; 



the largest and most conspicuous was on the little glebe farm, now 



removed for peace sake, which provoked the sharp wit of- his 



antagonist and blister old Sam. Day. It was to this effect : — 



"has .edes 



ad keprimenda agricolaeum 



latrocinia 



exstruxit johannis 



non tam exooriator qoam excoriatus." 



Good, says Sam to a passing friend, "More calf than butcher." 



His sermons were frequently philippics on the ingratitude of men, 



