6 The Thirty-Fourth General Meeting. 
grateful thanks to you for the cordial expressions of weleome which 
have proceeded both from the Corporation and from the local Society. 
I can assure you that there are few places which this Institute can 
visit with greater pleasure than the city and neighbourhood in which 
we stand at the present moment. You, Mr. Mayor, were kind 
enough to mention one or two exceptional circumstances which 
marked the first occasion when this Institute met at Salisbury ; but 
I think you omitted one fact which Members of the Institute can- 
not forget—that that meeting took place very shortly after the 
first inauguration of this Institute as a separate society, and that 
we were then, I may say, in a tentative condition. The Institute 
no doubt, was then started with the most sanguine hopes of success 
and long life and prosperity. But the future is always uncertain, 
and it is a source of great gratification to the Institute to return 
here in this Jubilee year, after thirty-eight years of successful ex- 
istence, and to witness the hearty reception which we have met with 
to-day, and the kindly remembrance of our former visit, so well 
expressed by the Mayor. My Lord Bishop, with regard to what 
so kindly fell from you, it will be, I am sure, a gratification to the 
Members of the Institute to feel that to their last meeting was 
in no small degree due the inauguration of the Society over 
which you so ably and fitly preside. For my own part I think we 
must all feel that, however enjoyable to ourselves these annual 
meeting's are, yet our object must be to promote and strengthen the 
exertions of those who live in the localities we visit. And I am 
sure of this—that the high position which the Wiltshire Archzo- 
logical Society occupies is a sign that the efforts of the Royal 
Archeological Institute have not been unavailing in promoting the 
study of the antiquities of Wiltshire as of other parts of the country. 
Wiltshire stands in a peculiar position, as has already been fitly said. 
Its remains are unique; and I have heard—I am a stranger myself ; 
Iam not speaking from knowledge, but from a report, and I trust a 
false one—that in times past these remains have suffered perhaps 
from not having guardians to take that intelligent interest in them 
which the present generation is able to do. I heard only the other 
day a story—I trust it is a story in every sense of the word—of 
