The P ^resident's Address. 



127 



dictionary to assist the study. What it really comprehends in its 

 popular sense is " A general inquiry of all that men have known and 

 done in every mode of life, since the earliest known epochs of history." 

 What your lirst President (Mr. Scrope) stated to be the object of 

 this Society was, "For the purpose of encouraging and promoting 

 to the utmost possible degree the stud// of the civil and ecclesiastical 

 History of the antiquities of our comity, together with its numerous 

 objects of natural history; for disseminating as far as possible, 

 through all ranks of society 3 a knowledge of every fact tending to 

 illustrate these interesting subjects ; and for the formation of a Museum 

 for preserving objects of interest connected with these subjects." 

 So here you have the large general scope of archaeology — and the 

 more limited and special sphere of the object of the Wiltshire 

 Society — the one general, this practically local. Ot all the great 

 branches of human knowledge, history is that upon which most has 

 been written, and which has been most popular ; aud the confidence 

 in history, and the success of historians, certainly of modern 

 historians, is mainly based on the increased knowledge of the past, 

 which increased industry and research have afforded. Antiquities 

 of every kind have been examined, the sites of ancient cities have 

 been laid bare, coins dug up and deciphered, inscriptions copied, 

 alphabets restored, hieroglyphics interpreted, and in some cases long- 

 forgotten languages re-constructed and re-arranged; the laws which 

 regulate the changes of human speech have been discovered, and by 

 them the most obscure periods in the early migration of nations have 

 been elucidated. But notwithstanding all this, the study of the 

 movements of man is still in its infancy as compared with the study 

 of the movements of nature ; and it is only as nations advance more 

 and more to a high state of culture that they are anxious and studious 

 in these matters. Every branch of archaeological research, however 

 humble, tends to show more and more clearly the history of man's 

 progress and the developement of his civilization. Domestic archi- 

 tecture, military architecture, ecclesiastical architecture, roads, fences, 

 bridges, customs, sepulchral mounds, traditionary laws, and even the 

 names of plants, all are worthy of our attention, and each of them 

 expressive of some distinct phase of society. Take, for instance, 



