272 An Address on Archeology. 
words, which are current in society. Hence it arises that erroneous 
judgments are often formed of a science, and many imputations 
thrown upon it, which in reality are attributable to the onesided 
and partial conceptions of those who regard it from a popular view. 
Tn like manner has it fared with Archeology. The ordinary notion 
of an antiquary is that of an easy, goodnatured it may be, yet 
certainly of an eccentric and credulous personage, who is little 
interested about the present, and expends all his energies in an 
extravagant admiration of the past. Not only is he supposed to 
partake of that incapacity for practical life, which is alleged 
against men of studious habits, but the utility of his labours is 
questioned, and they are looked upon as conducive to hardly any 
other end than the satisfaction of mere curiosity. It cannot be 
denied, that in many cases the charge has been deservedly made, 
I mean where antiquarian efforts have been limited to an unin- 
telligent collecting of relics, or where the enquirer, in an overweening 
respect for his own occupations, has been betrayed into expressions 
of contempt or indifference with regard to those of his contempo- 
raries. But such men are of a kindred nature to those, in whose 
opinion history is a bare chronological record, nothing but an old 
almanack; they cannot with justice challenge to themselves the 
title they assume, nor is their claim to be ranked as archeological 
students much better founded than that of the ignorant, noisy 
declaimer on liberty, taxes, and education, to a credit for political 
knowledge and insight. They are either worthy to be placed in the 
same category with those of whom Horace Walpole is the appro- 
priate type, and whose intellectual standard is so sarcastically 
described by Macaulay. Some of you may remember his words. 
They are as follows :—“ After the labours of the auction room and 
the print shop, he unbent his mind in the House of Commons, and 
having indulged in the recreation of making laws and voting 
millions, he returned to more important pursuits, to researches 
after Queen Mary’s cowl, Wolsey’s red hat, the pipe with which 
Van Tromp smoked in his last sea fight, and the spur which King 
William struck into the flank of Sorrel.” Or if they can demand 
an exemption from this class, they are possessed by a spirit of what 
