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oldest metallic objects ; these, however, were not as yet 
composed of iron, but of a peculiar mixture of metals, copper 
and a small portion of tin melted together, to which the name 
of bronze has been given ; from which circumstance the period 
in which this substance was commonly used has been named 
the bronze-period. Finally, all objects appertaining to the 
period when iron was generally known and employed, are 
included in the third class, and belong to the iron-period" 
Such is the system adopted by the antiquaries of the 
north, and which has been rather hastily accepted by some 
of our own writers on antiquarian subjects. It is ingenious, 
and has, no doubt, something attractive about it ; bat I 
believe it to be unnatural as well as un-historical, and I think 
it may easily be shown that it is even contradicted by facts. 
I ascribe this erroneous classification, first, to too great a 
tendency of the northern antiquaries to hasty generalization ; 
and secondly, and, perhaps, more especially, to what I will 
term a vicious system of arranging museums, which has 
prevailed to some degree in all countries. The proper, and 
the only correct, arrangement of a museum of antiquities is, 
no doubt, the ethnological one. Relics of antiquity should 
be classed according to the peoples and tribes to whom they 
are known or believed to have belonged, and to the localities 
in which they are found, and then only have they any intel- 
ligible meaning. Thus, to take an example, flint articles 
found in the district of Bridlington have not necessarily 
any connexion with articles of flint which might be found, 
for instance, in Herefordshire, or in Wiltshire, either with 
respect to the people who made them, or originally possessed 
them, or to the period to which they belonged. If, therefore, 
we wish to understand these relics, and to derive advantage 
from them, we must look at those of each locality by them- 
selves, and pay attention in each case to the circumstances con- 
nected with them individually. But people have been adopting 
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