106 



The Seventh General Meeting. 



standing near — ho said to himself, "My old friends, you have been 

 known many a year, and therefore your day must be put off: we 

 arc going to look after the Saxons. You are erected by a people 

 we know not who, for a purpose we know not what, and at a 

 period we know not when — you have been the peg upon which all 

 kinds of disquisition, and every description of speculation have been 

 hung; — this very year there has appeared in one of our most 

 known periodicals a paper giving you a Buddhist origin, and I 

 dare say next year somebody else may find out some other source 

 of your wonders. Therefore you must permit us on this occasion to 

 meet at Swindon and talk about the Saxons." Here, then, they 

 were assembled on the very borders of Alfred's kingdom — the 

 borders of Wessex — as near, at all events, as it was once safe 

 to live, because the line of demarcation, along which the great 

 fights took place, was not more than ten miles to the north of the 

 town. Passing from Bath, it ran a little along the Cotswolds, it 

 circled through Berkshire, and this spot being high and elevated 

 in those days, it was probably well fortified. If therefore they 

 cast their eyes northward, eastward, or westward, they would have 

 the satisfaction of fixing their eyes upon a people with whom we 

 must have a deep sympathy, from whom we had derived many of 

 our institutions, and whose records we should do well to search, 

 because they were trustworthy and not merely of a theoretical 

 description. With regard to the Society, he said, speaking for 

 himself, he was sure it had far exceeded in its results anything 

 which he expected would have been the case when a meeting for 

 its formation was held at Devizes seven years ago. The great work 

 of the Society had been its Magazine, and he ventured to defy all 

 the counties in England to produce a work of a similar character, 

 containing so much that was interesting and trustworthy. Besides 

 the Secretaries and the Committee, the Society was under great 

 obligations to the Clergy throughout the county. The Bishop of 

 Salisbury had, from the first, shown a very strong desire to further 

 that particular study which it was the business of the Society to 

 foster. It was a most fortunate thing that, at a period he knew 

 not when, our land was divided into parishes ; and it was also a 



