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An Inaugural Address to the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland. Session 1860-61. Proc. vol. iv. p. 5.

A Paper read to the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, July 13, 1857. Proc. vol. ii. p. 489.

Read to the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, 11th February 1861. Proc. vol. iv. p. 119.

Printed separately in 1862, and "Inscribed with Feelings of the most Sincere Esteem to Mrs. Pender, Crumpsall House, Manchester."

Read to the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, 8th April 1861. Proc. vol. iv. p. 211.

Corrected Abstract of a Communication to the Royal Society of Edinburgh on 20th January 1868, with Notes and an Appendix. Proc. of the Royal Society, No. 75.

ARCHAEOLOGY:

ITS PAST AND ITS FUTURE WORK.

It has become a practice of late years in this Society for one of the Vice-Presidents to read an Annual Address on some topic or topics connected with Archaeology. I appear here to-night more in compliance with this custom than with any hope of being able to state aught to you that is likely to prove either of adequate interest or of adequate importance for such an occasion.

In making this admission, I am fully aware that the deficiency lies in myself, and not in my subject. For truly there are few studies which offer so many tempting fields of observation and comment as Archaeology. Indeed, the aim and the groundwork of the studies of the antiquary form a sufficient guarantee for the interest with which these studies are invested. For the leading object and intent of all his pursuits is--MAN, and man's ways and works, his habits and thoughts, from the earliest dates at which we can find his traces and tracks upon the earth, onward and forwards along the journey of past time. During this long journey, man has everywhere left scattered behind and around him innumerable relics, forming so many permanent impressions and evidences of his march and progress. These impressions and evidences the antiquary searches for and studies--in the changes which have in successive eras taken place in the materials and forms of the implements and tools which man has from the earliest times used in the chase and in agriculture; in the weapons which he has employed in battle; in the habitations which he has dwelt in during peace, and in the earth-works and stone-works which he has raised during war; in the dresses and ornaments which he has worn; in the varying forms of religious faith which he has held, and the deities that he has worshipped; in the sacred temples and fanes which he has reared; in the various modes in which he has disposed of the dead; in the laws and governments under which he has lived; in the arts which he has cultivated; in the sculptures which he has carved; in the coins and medals which he has struck; in the inscriptions which he has cut; in the records which he has written; and in the character and type of the languages in which he has spoken. All the markings and relics of man, in the dim and distant past, which industry and science can possibly extract from these and from other analogous sources, Archaeology carefully collects, arranges, and generalises, stimulated by the fond hope that through such means she will yet gradually recover more and more of the earlier chronicles and lost annals of the human race, and of the various individual communities and families of that race.

The objects of antiquarian research embrace events and periods, many of which are placed within the era of written evidence; but many more are of a date long anterior to the epoch when man made that greatest of human discoveries--the discovery, namely, of the power of permanently recording words, thoughts, and acts, in symbolical and alphabetic writing. To some minds it has seemed almost chimerical for the archaeologist to expect to regain to any extent a knowledge of the conditions and circumstances of man, and of the different nations of men, before human cunning had learned to collect and inscribe them on stone or brass, or had fashioned them into written or traditional records capable of being safely floated down the stream of time. But the modern history of Archaeology, as well as the analogies of other allied pursuits, are totally against any such hopeless views.

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