The Inaugural Address. 



7 



— we had the pleasure of welcoming that hody two years ago — ours 

 is a County Society. We are specially concerned with the records 

 and history of this County, and the questiou at once suggests itself, 

 what is a County, and why should we have a County Society ? Now 

 it may be said we have County histories and they will give us the 

 answer. We have the monumental work of Sir Richard Colt Hoare, 

 unfortunately incomplete ; we have Aubrey, with his interpreter 

 Canon Jackson ; and we have John Britton's History of Wiltshire. 

 But all these works are not exactly histories in the sense generally 

 attached to that word. History as a rule implies a beginning, a 

 middle, and an end, though the end is constantly receding ; it pre- 

 supposes a certain continuity in the subject, and a certain method 

 in the treatment of it by the author. But none of these books, 

 however valuable, are, or indeed claim to be, histories in the sense I 

 have indicated. Sir Richard Colt Hoare's work is an account of the 

 different Hundreds, one by one. The other two books I have men- 

 tioned are arranged on a parochial basis, or mainly so. They do 

 not treat the county as a whole, or in the order of time, and, there- 

 fore, they are not County histories in the true sense of the word 

 " history/'' They are rather materials for history : materials it is true 

 of the most valuable kind, and without which a real history would 

 be absolutely impossible. But it may be asked is a County history, 

 on true historical lines, really possible ? I think it is. At present 

 indeed we only know a County as a unit for certain purposes of civil 

 administration and political organization, as sending members to 

 Parliament, as imposing rates, and so on ; while increased facilities 

 of communication are tending more and more to level down any 

 peculiar characteristics which still survive to mark off one County in 

 England from another, whether in speech, or in ideas, or in customs. 

 And therefore it will probably be very difficult for the archseologists 

 of the future, when we are the dust out of which the futnre 

 generations will be made, and are become ourselves the objects of 

 antiquarian research, to attach any very distinct ideas, social or 

 political, to the separate counties of England, so as to mark them 

 off one from the other, and to be able to say that in our time any 

 particular County had a separate life and development of its own. 



