12 General Account of Inaugural Meeting. 
Societies have been formed for a similar end in several other 
counties—for example, in Somerset, Sussex, and Northamptonshire, 
and they have proved eminently successful, and popular. It is, 
indeed, obviously desirable that some such means should be employed 
for bringing into union and codperation those among the inhabitants 
of a provincial district who are already engaged, or are willing to 
engage, in the prosecution of these researches; and who, for want 
of encouragement and sympathy from others, may either wholly 
desist from them, or waste their powers in imperfect efforts, which 
often terminate without leaving a trace behind for the assistance or 
instruction of others. 
No doubt it may be said that there exist already several National 
Societies of the kind to which they may resort. But the place of 
meeting of these, generally in the metropolis, is probably distant 
from their residences. And the interest felt by each person in 
researches, extended over so wide a field as the whole island, is 
proportionably diluted. Just as the history of England is a matter 
of deeper interest to Englishmen than the history of Europe, or of 
the world, so to a Wiltshireman the antiquities and history of his 
own County, and especially of his immediate neighbourhood, must 
offer an object of much stronger regard than those of remote places. 
Few persons, perhaps, are to be found insensible to the former, while 
it requires the peculiar constitution of a professed antiquary to feel 
much zeal in the pursuit of the latter. 
Mr. Hunter in the preface to his admirable work on the Deanery 
of Doncaster, puts this generally prevailing sentiment in a strong 
light. ‘What person,” he asks, “of taste and feeling, or of a 
cultivated mind—or, even, who is not utterly devoid of a natural 
curiosity, but feels the difference between living in a district which 
has been well described by topographers, and one which is a blank 
in these respects? In the former there is not an edifice of any 
antiquity, a church, a castle, a manor-house, a cross, or a fragment 
of ruin, in his neighbourhood, that is not connected with some 
incident or character that makes it a matter of interest.” ‘“Topo- 
graphy,” he goes on to say, “calls up the spirits of past generations. 
We see them gliding among the trees planted by them, or through 
the ruins of the buildings they inhabited. We see them in their 
proper apparel, and with all the rank and port that belonged to 
them. Where there is no written recovery of the past, we can live 
only in the present generation. In the ages that are gone by all 
is indistinctness; and the want of knowledge of the events that 
formerly occurred around us, in the spots that we frequent, deprives 
us of a source of great intellectual enjoyment, and of information 
often of much practical value.” 
It is this Joca/ interest and attachment that has occasioned the 
compilation and publication of many county histories—a matter in 
respect to which Wiltshire is unfortunately much in arrear of 
