The Pre$ide?it's Address. 



127 



on the way, that the excursions cannot fail to prove delightful as well 

 as instructive. I might perhaps, here observe that great advantages are 

 to be derived from an institution of this kind, through the fact of 

 its cherishing and drawing attention to the remaining relics of the 

 past, and thus affording the best light for illustrating the history 

 of our race. Another advantage arising from these institutions is 

 that it helps us to preserve many emblems which are excellent and 

 beautiful in themselves, and which have so often in many parishes 

 been mutilated and destroyed from mere ignorance of their intrinsic 

 value ; such works, for instance, as the Fairford windows, which you 

 will see to-morrow, and which have attained a world-wide reputation, 

 as tradition says that they were captured by a London merchant 

 from a vessel bound for Rome, and who subsequently built the parish 

 church there, and inserted the glass in twenty-eight windows, in 

 which many passages of the Old and New Testaments are represented. 

 These windows are also valuable as models to artists for form and colour, 

 and are, I believe, some of the most ancient specimens of painted glass 

 in the kingdom. The church itself is a fine structure, in the 

 Perpendicular style, and contains a handsome tower rising from the 

 centre, together with a chancel, nave, and aisles : it also contains a 

 fine old oak Gothic screen, which encloses the chancel. We are 

 going to diverge a little from our most direct road to Fairford in 

 order to revisit the fine old church of St. Sampson, at Cricklade, 

 where I hope we shall find the excellent Vicar ready to receive us 

 and do the honours of his church, which I know he will gladly do if 

 at home. From Cricklade we proceed to Latton and Down Ampney, 

 both of which churches have been well restored within a few years 

 past, and are well worthy of being inspected, more especially the 

 latter; and I only wish we had in every parish some learned interpreter 

 who could bring them all under our review. Might it not be a fitting 

 subject for the consideration of this Society some future day, whether 

 one person in every parish might not be found to undertake to give 

 a short summary of all that is best worthy of observation, for the 

 benefit of posterity. Now, for example, Down Ampney, with which 

 I happen to be pretty well acquainted, through the circumstance of 

 my brother-in-law, (the Rev. Greville Phillimore,) having been its 



