114 



The Seventh General Meeting 



Mr. Fane that one of the principal of them was limited in point of 

 duration, for if the progress of church-building and church-restora- 

 tion continued to be so rapid as it had lately been, there would 

 soon be no old churches for them to examine. lie proposed the 

 health of the Rev. Canon Jackson, one of their Secretaries, and the 

 Editor of the Society's Magazine. 



The Rev. Canon Jackson said his brother Secretaries had taken 

 a share in the management of the Magazine, and he should be sorry 

 to deprive them of a share of the praise. Notwithstanding seven 

 years' work in endeavouring to discover the past history of the 

 county, much still remained to be investigated, and he feared that 

 the history of some places was past investigation. That, however, 

 was not their fault ; it was the fault of those who had gone before. 



The Chairman was sure they were not so destitute of gratitude 

 as to think of passing over the colleagues of Mr. Jackson, although 

 he had been singled out for particular notice. He begged, therefore, 

 at once to propose the health of Mr. Lukis and Mr. Smith, and he 

 would also couple with that toast the health of the Local Secretaries 

 and the Local Committee, whose arrangements had been of the 

 most satisfactory character. 



The Rev. W. C. Lukis having returned thanks on behalf of all 

 the gentlemen referred to, would say one word with reference to 

 the Society. He really believed that it had already done a very 

 good work in this county. Even if nothing more had been done 

 than the publication of the articles which had appeared in the 

 Magazine, he thought they would have reason to feel well satisfied. 

 But besides the instructions conveyed by those articles on many 

 points of local history, the annual gatherings of the Society had 

 tended to excite in the inhabitants of the neighbourhoods in which 

 they were held, a more than temporary interest in the works of 

 nature and art, in the remains of antiquity, and in the biographies 

 of remarkable men. Such, in fact, was the object set before them 

 when the Society was first established. The then President, Mr. 

 Poulett Scrope, in his opening address in 1853, said that "archaeo- 

 logy* the pursuit of which we are uniting to promote, is the study 

 of antiquities not for the mere gratification of an unreasoning 



