10 General Account of Inaugural Meeting. 
or contemned. The true course to pursue is to direct it into whole- 
some and legitimate, in lieu of morbid and unworthy channels; and 
this is the province of Archzology rightly understood. 
No doubt some antiquarian, and even historical relics, are of a 
trivial character, and some as apocryphal as any monkish reliquary ; 
yet a real dignity, and a true interest attaches to objects which are 
authentically associated with noble characters, and deeds of high 
emprise. Who could view without a thrill of imterest—in the 
armoury lately formed in Windsor Castle—the identical weapons 
worn and used in their heroic encounters by Charlemagne, Edward 
the Black Prince, Cromwell, and Napoleon? Who can look 
unmoved upon the original copy of Magna Charta in the British 
Museum? or raise his eyes to the window in Whitehall where the 
Royal Charles was beheaded? or tread the pavement of West- 
minster Hall, the scene of so many stately pageants of the middle 
ages? or of the adjacent Abbey, where lie so many of the illustrious 
dead? or who can walk unconcerned over the field of Flodden, or 
of Waterloo ? 
It is, then, to this universal sentiment, this yearning after some 
material evidences of the great facts of history, that the archeologist 
appeals when he points, with almost reverential regard, to the 
camps, the battle-fields, the castles, the monuments, that witnessed 
the occurrence of splendid actions or important events, or when he 
offers to the curious eye medals impressed with the likeness of some 
heroic sovereign, the armour of a Roman warrior, or the ornaments 
of an Egyptian beauty. A collection of antiquities 7s, indeed, 
history itself made palpable to the senses, It is by these means 
that the personages, places, and facts with which history deals are 
brought, as it were, bodily before us, to illustrate what otherwise 
would be but a dry narrative and nomenclature. Archeology 
presents, moreover, to us, in vivid forms and colors, the actual life 
and manners of our ancestors, and the scenes and memorials of 
their less distinguished actions—affixing the stamp of reality to 
what would else be scarcely distinguishable from the fictions of 
romance. 
Nor is the study of the works of former generations less impor- 
tant, as affording lessons in Art, of the highest practical utility. 
It is well known that the most perfect examples of the beautiful, in 
almost every department of art, in architecture, sculpture, and design, 
are derived from antiquity. And, even in this utilitarian age, the 
quality of beauty is found to possess an intrinsic mercantile value, 
and its study to be indispensable to the prosperity of a commercial, 
and manufacturing nation, wholly beyond, and besides, the genuine 
pleasure it is calculated to afford, and its elevating and civilizing 
influence on our tastes and habits. 
I may give as one instance the great development that has taken 
place of late years in the ceramic art, entirely through the attention 
