44 SECOND ANNUAL MEETING. 
Second Annual Meeting held at Wells, September \Tth, 1850. 
The Hon. and Right Reverend the Lord Bishop of the 
Diocese, Vice President, in the Chair. 
Pluning Plertin, 
The Very Rey. the DEeAn and other Dignitaries of the 
Cathedral were present, besides a large attendance of the 
gentry of the county. 
The Right Rev. Chairman opened the meeting with the 
following address :—— 
“] have much pleasure in acceding to the request made 
me to take the chair at this meeting, but I felt that I 
should better render what little assistance I am able to 
give to this society, by putting my observations upon paper 
than by trusting myself to speak off-hand upon subjects in 
which I indeed feel an interest, but with which I must 
profess myself, at the outset, to be most inadequately 
acquainted. My knowledge of those studies which it is 
the object of this society to promote, is, I must repeat, 
most slender and imperfect. Still it does not appear to 
me necessary to have a full knowledge of a pursuit in order 
to assign it its proper value in the wide eurriculum of 
human learning. 7’at must, indeed, be a narrow mind, 
that can see no excellence beyond its own sphere, no 
object worthy of acquirement beyond what it has itself 
been able to master. Least of all, is it characteristic of 
the christian spirit to despise everything we cannot under- 
stand, or to value the attainments of others, lower than 
our own. Damnant quod non intelligunt, the principle so 
properly denounced at your first meeting, by one whose 
absence, and the cause of whose absence we must all so 
