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The Thirty -Fourth General Meeting. 



grateful thanks to you for the cordial expressions of welcome which 

 have proceeded both from the Corporation and from the local Society. 

 I can assure you that there are few places which this Institute can 

 visit with greater pleasure than the city and neighbourhood in which 

 we stand at the present moment. You, Mr. Mayor, were kind 

 enough to mention one or two exceptional circumstances which 

 marked the first occasion when this Institute met at Salisbury ; but 

 I think you omitted one fact which Members of the Institute can- 

 not forget — that that meeting took place very shortly after the 

 first inauguration of this Institute as a separate society, and that 

 we were then, I may say, in a tentative condition. The Institute 

 no doubt, was then started with the most sanguine hopes o£ success 

 and long life and prosperity. But the future is always uncertain, 

 and it is a source of great gratification to the Institute to return 

 here in this Jubilee year, after thirty- eight years of successful ex- 

 istence, and to witness the hearty reception which we have met with 

 to-day, and the kindly remembrance of our former visit, so well 

 expressed by the Mayor. My Lord Bishop, with regard to what 

 so kindly fell from you, it will be, I am sure, a gratification to the 

 Members of the Institute to feel that to their last meeting was 

 in no small degree due the inauguration of the Society over 

 which you so ably and fitly preside. For my own part I think we 

 must all feel that, however enjoyable to ourselves these annual 

 meetings are, yet our object must be to promote and strengthen the 

 exertions of those who live in the localities we visit. And I am 

 sure of this — that the high position which the Wiltshire Archseo- 

 logical Society occupies is a sign that the efforts of the Royal 

 Archseological Institute have not been unavailing in promoting the 

 study of the antiquities of Wiltshire as of other parts of the country. 

 Wiltshire stands in a peculiar position, as has already been fitly said. 

 Its remains are unique ; and I have heard — I am a stranger myself; 

 I am not speaking from knowledge, but from a report, and I trust a 

 false one — that in times past these remains have suffered perhaps 

 from not having guardians to take that intelligent interest in them 

 which the present generation is able to do. I heard only the other 

 day a story — I trust it is a story in every sense of the word — of 



