By Tom Burgess, Esq., F.8.A. 



307 



somewhat intimate knowledge of the subject. I feel that I owe 



I this explanation to the people of Devizes, and if in my preliminary 

 remarks, I may touch on what appears to be trite and known sub- 

 jects to the veteran archaeologists whom I see around me, they will 

 probably excuse me, as it is a necessary prelude to the particular 

 subject of my remarks. 



On Wednesday evening as I listened to my friend, Mr. Brock's 

 | description of the Viking's Ship, in which he was, as usual, as exact 

 ] as he was eloquent, I could not help recalling to mind the old Saxon 

 I poem of Beowulf, in which the old chieftain wished to be buried on 

 the nose of some promontory, so that his funeral mound might be 

 I at once a landmark and a tomb, a grave and a living memorial of 

 I the dead. If we could only realise this grand notion of the old 



II sea king being ready at the final day to go forth to sea at the call 

 | of his gods to fight and to conquer, we should realise to a greater 



extent than at present the reason why so many instruments and 

 weapons of war were buried with their owner's remains, and of 

 which so many beautiful specimens are preserved in your valuable 



I and excellent museum. 



It is not, however, of these ancient warriors I am about to speak, 

 but of the earthworks they built to defend their dwelling places, 



I and the mounds they left behind them. It is but proper to speak 

 reverently of these in the county of Wilts, for there is probably no 



I other county in England which presents so many features of interest 

 to the student of the past as the county which has given us so warm 



j a welcome this week. It is replete with so many memories — is 

 studded with so many monuments of the old fathers of the land, as 

 to offer an almost unrivalled field for the research and the study of 



6 antiquity. There is scarcely a headland or a hillock that rises above 



u the grassy slopes of the Wiltshire Downs that has not some remains 



i to indicate the old inhabitants — fastnesses in which they kept their 

 household treasures, or barrows in which they buried their dead. 



I On the one hand you see those mysterious circles which are supposed 

 to indicate their temples, and on the other the far-stretching dykes 

 which seem to say to the neighbouring tribes, " Thus far shalt thou 



j go and no further.'" In front of the great Wansdyke, and nearly 



