The Dinner. 



141 



the first of these was that of " Long 1 life and prosperity to her 

 Most Gracious Majesty the Queen." 



The President, said .it < was .now his pleasing duty to ask the 

 Mayor and -Corporation of the Borough .to receive the thanks of 

 the Society for their very kindly, friendly, and brotherly reception. 

 They had taken thirty-five years to come amongst them, aud it was 

 very kind of them not to think they had been slow about it. He 

 believed they were not sorry to have lived in a generation which 

 saw the visit of this venerable Society to Calne, and so, perhaps, the 

 fact might take away the sting of their otherwise inexplicable 

 neglect of so important a place as the Borough of Calne. It was a 

 very great pleasure and happiness to him that this visit should come 

 during his presidency. Calne was a place he had always regarded 

 with very great affection, and it was especially happy to feel that 

 one had dropped in the centre of a district so full of antiquities and 

 which have been so carefully and so jealously guarded. England 

 sometimes was looked upon on the Continent, and by those who did 

 not know us, as a place given up to trade and commerce, and where 

 everything was measured by money. He certainly did not think 

 that was the case at all with regard to many, and particularly our 

 antiquities. He was very much struck with a remark of a learned 

 friend of the University of Berlin (Professor Emil Hiibner), who 

 had edited the Roman inscriptions in a good many countries, 

 amongst others those of Great Britain, and he said most distinctly 

 that there was no country in the world with which he was acquainted 

 where the Roman inscriptions were so carefully guarded and so free 

 from forgery as they were in England. The reason of that was that 

 all classes had co-operated in the work of guardianship of our archae- 

 ological treasures. There had been a liberal spirit diffused through- 

 out the country amongst those engaged in trade and commerce, 

 quite as much as amongst the owners of ancestral homes and broad 

 acres, and the result had been that wherever they went they found 

 that whatever there was worth preserving had been carefully pre- 

 served. Therefore it was with great pleasure he was able to meet 

 the Mayor and Corporation of this borough, and to thank them for 

 what they had done, and for what they would continue to do, in 



