6 



The Twenty-Seventh Annual Meeting. 



accepted a post which he admitted could have been so much more 

 worthily filled, and having done so with very short notice, they 

 would be kind enough to extend to him that indulgence which he 

 believed was usually extended on such occasions. Another special 

 reason for asking 1 their indulgence was because, as a matter of fact, 

 he was almost an absolute tyro in archaeology. He had spent the 

 greater part of his life in India, and had come home only a few 

 years ago, but had he not come into that neighbournood and come 

 across such men as Canon Jones, Mr. Powell, formerly a Curate of 

 Monkton Farleigh, Canon Jackson and others, he should never 

 have had the hardihood to stand before them at that time. Having 

 had many agreeable communications with those gentlemen the result 

 was that he took it into his head that he would endeavour to find 

 out something at all events of the archaeology of his own particular 

 parish and neighbourhood. The first thing, Sir Charles went on, 

 after I have been poring over the parish registers or some old 

 terriers of the days of Elizabeth, or the Monasticon or what not, I 

 ask myself, and I am asked by others, Cui bono, what is the good 

 of it all ? Well, I suppose I need not argue that question before 

 an assembly such as this, but still it seems to me that if the enemies 

 of the study of archaeology will consider a little, they will find out 

 that, unconsciously, they themselves live a great part of their ex- 

 istence in the midst of that very study which they affect to despise. 

 Our life is obviously passed in three different worlds, as it were — 

 the past, the present, and the future, and every hour that we spend 

 in so much of the past as is not personal, especially in the more 

 distant past, in history, biography, and the like, is, in fact, an hour 

 spent in the study of archaeology. How necessary also this study 

 is to the daily wants of life we do not perhaps sufficiently consider. 

 I will not suppose that any of us desire to build a house, because, as 

 the saying is, " Fools build houses that wise men may live in them" 

 but at least we all desire to have houses to live in. Of course if we 

 live in a town we take the house that is most commodious, the least 

 expensive, the best situated for our purposes, and have done with it. 

 But if we live in the suburbs of a town or in the country, and 

 have any choice of our own, we don't choose the modern style of 



