Rev. J. E. Jackson's Address. 39 
ment, whilst the word is on my lips, I cannot help expressing my 
surprise that it has not done something for Wiltshire. We have, 
or rather I am ashamed to say we /ad, one of the most singular 
monuments of remote history that the whole world could exhibit. 
The Temple that once stood at Avebury was, perhaps unique. It 
was a most extraordinary structure, connected probably with the 
earliest inhabitants of our native land. And when any person 
contrasts in his mind the wonderful transformation that has passed 
over England; the changes that this little island now presents, 
teeming as it does with civilization and wealth—commanding as it 
does, the commerce and luxury of the world; I say that is almost 
impossible, without the help of a strong imagination, to carry one- 
self back to the days of Avebury. We want some author of Ivan- 
hoe to bring those days back before our eyes. Of the destruction 
of that temple I am ashamed to speak. It was an act of barbarism : 
a national disgrace. 
But in wandering to Avebury we are getting upon a subject and 
upon times too remote to be enlightened by historical researches. 
No illustrations of that dark period have come down to us, and the 
topographer is not at liberty to invent them. He must keep to 
facts, and produce evidence for his statements. I was saying that 
it was very hard and very weary work, when the enquiry extends 
over a large district, to recover evidence and materials for history. 
It is so even with respect to times comparatively modern: for the 
memory of persons and things soon passes away. With the cir- 
cumstances of our own neighbourhoods as they now are—with the 
parishes, the places, the events—we are all of us familiar enough. 
But it is this very familiarity which blinds us. In a few years, a 
very few, much fewer than we are apt to think of, all that we now 
know of local events and persons will have faded into oblivion, 
unless some one records it. The changes that are daily taking 
place, and that seem to us to be mere matters of course, following 
one another as naturally as wave follows wave, amount in the course 
even of half a century, almost to obliteration—to an effacement 
almost as complete as that which those waves make upon the sand. 
of the sea-shore. A new order of things soon grows up, and of the 
former one nothing but fragments can be recovered. Some Aubrey 
jots down a few passing memoranda of his own times—things which 
those about him would hardly take notice of, knowing them so well 
as they do, and supposing that they will always be as well known 
as they are; but let a couple of hundred years go by, and what was 
common. and notorious has grown to be antique and curious. 
{ have addressed you now at an unpardonable length upon the 
articular subject of Wiltshire Topography, having been, as it is 
y this time too late to explain, rather given to pursuits of that 
kind myself. It is with pleasure that I join this Society, hoping 
that it may soon number amongst the other rational objects which 
