Archæology.

ARCH ? OLOGY .

"VVe have recorded in our last two impressions portions of the proceedings of various Archaeolog ical Societies , and we should have been glad if our space permitted us to give these reports more in detail . For we feel that , despite sometimes the apparently trivial intent of some

tedious papers of some good friends of ours , there is no study which has after all a greater charm for the educated and intelligent , no greater claim on the good will and gratitude even of mankind . For , as the late Bisho ) of Winchester so well said at Winchester in 184 . 5 ( ne was tneri

Bishop of Oxford ) in words which we shall probably have forgotten , and it may do us geiod to be reminded that what archaeology and archaeologists " profess to be is neither small nor unimportant . " On the contrary , let us take first of all his striking exposition of this goodly

study and pursuit : — " Assuredly the first idea of our pursuit is noble : we profess to believe in the fellowship which , for all the generations of men , runs through all times . We know that we now are what all those bygone ages have made us to be ;

and we will not be fooled by the visible intrusive present , into believing that we , and our objects , and our days , are all , or the greatest things . We see that we are a link in the golden chain which reaches from the beginning to the end . We protest against the old reproach , which likens

Time to the beggar ' putting good deeds , as alms , into the wallet at his back for mere oblivion . ' We declare that to ' have done' shall no more be ' to hang quite out of fashion , like rusty mail in monumental mockery . ' We know that there was a life—a true-acting life—in those old times , showing itself forth in those old deeds :

and what that life was , we desire earnestly to know . We wish to see it in its own lights and shades ; not with the bird ' s-eye view which may be caught from some distant eminence ; but even as it really was , —with its strength and its weakness , —with its beauties and its defects ; and for this we know that we must look at it with a

loving earnestness ;—with love , for to nothing but love will that veiled past reveal its reverend features , —and with earnestness , lor it is only by the careful study of its every lineament that we can fashion forth its mysterious countenance . This is our purpose , —to reproduce before our

eyes those old times : and therefore is it that we would watch with such a brooding care over every relique , be its outward circumstance in itself beautiful or deformed for , so that it be not tampered with , and taught a new tale , it is a witness of that which was , and is not , —of that which we would fain recal ; and therefore do we

pore into its dust not as if that dust was precious in itself , but precious for the witness which it bears , —precious as the coat of down upon the virgin and nnhandled fruit telling 11 s , that so indeed Time left it , with this cunning overlaying which should bear silent but undoubted record of any stolen visits of the artfullest intruder . " And therein is the true value of these ancient

reliques 5 and it is for their lack of such particulars and epitomes and compendiums are noted b y the sagacious Bacon , as ' the corruption and moths that have fretted and corroded many sound and excellent bodies of history , and reduced them to base and unprofitable dregs . ' For

by the ministry of such soft , unobtrusive , and often unregarded voices is borne , if any where , ' 0 watching ears the message of the Past j that strain of power and mystery and beauty to which the fool is deaf , but which sounds so sweetly to the wise of heart , and stirs up and enlightens its

wisdom within her secret cells . Therefore is it that with curious eyes we would scrutinize every trace of the manners of those who went before j ? ' " 7 _ that we have dared with no irreverent 'arniliarity to open their mysterious barrows , — that we peer into their dust , —that every common

• essel which they used , every coin , every monumertt , and every ancient grave has a charm for us , because in these lingers for us something of tneir household words and household deeds;—° t the thoughts which they were thinking , and

tney wrougnt ; because in tnem the en > as they were , revive before us , and help us J stronger spells than those of fancy , to rep ° " f , ruct > out of its wasted ashes , the busy active

Archæology.

We think that words can hardly be found better to express both the value and the need of archaeolo'v , and they deserve to be affectionately reir . e nbered and carefully thought over by us all , by us who once heard them , or know them well , by those by whom up to the present time ti n-

ware altogether unknown . And nowhere is the enforcement of the practical result of archaeology more clearly set forth than in the eloquent words of the Bishop , which follow . We cannot , unfortunately , do full justice to his entire argument , but we give a portion .

"Thi record of the past is the bond of the present—one language , one faith , one history , one ancient birth-place , one common , mysterious , unsearched original—these are the strong sinews which hold together , in a living unity , the many separate articulations jointed to

each other to form a people and a nation . And in such an age as this , any pursuit which tends to strengthen these ties , cannot surely be without its practical importance . But there is more than a security for love of country in this living on of the past into the present ; for , without an

accurate knowledge of the past , all attempts to improve and raise the present must be , to a great degree , shallow andempirical . Whether we know it or not , the past and present are indeed thus linked together . We are the present phase of that great past which our forefathers were ; it

lives in us . There , in seed , and bud , there , in fore-act and beginning , are our virtues and our vices—there are the promises of which we are the fulfilment or the falsifying ;—then were drawn in honourable faith those bills on coming time which we are in such peril of dishonouring . In our institutions , in our manners , in our

language , that old past is still with us . And if we would mend the present around us , we must see from what its errors and defects have arisen j we must know our fathers' lives and their habits of thought , to understand their plan , and without this knowledge we cannot carry on

their counsels , or perfect meetly what they have well begun ; or supply by our long experience whatever of weakness or confusion crept through human infirmity into their strong schemes ; or take up , before it be too late , any threads which they have suffered carelessly , or

unawares , to slip . And this knowledge cannot possibl y be too observant and particular ; without such particularity and closeness we shall act like children , turning hoarded diamonds into counters for their play , or like the degenerate Chinese , handling with blank stupidity the

philosophical machinery their fathers framed for cunning use . The want of this knowledge makes men innovators who would be improvers , and turns into destroyers those who would restore . So that they who are most apt to remind us of the undoubted truth that " the old

age and length of days of the world should be accounted antiquity ; aud ought to be attributed to our own times , not to the youth of the world which it enjoyed amongst the ancients : for that age , though , with respect to us , ancient and greater , yet with regard to the world was new

and less ; —they who most enforce this truth upon us have the most need to pay to these before us their due regard ; for their own claims to be the true ancients is that they have succeeded to the wisdom which has gone before them ; their own hope of overlooking : common

barriers comes from this , that they are mounted upon other men ' s shoulders , and have a higher range of view—but to put forward that claim with truth they must at least be on those shoulders they must have entered [ into other men ' s experience . In truth , these two , the past

and future , are correlatives each to the otherand , as we may see plainly marked in infancy , no man has a future unless he have a past . Infancy and early childhood hath no past and it hath also no future . To its unformed eye and untaught power of judgment , all is present time ; it must get to itself a past , and in getting

that it opens to itself a future j and so , more or lejss , it must be with all men . It is on the mouldering monuments of earlier days that we learn to decypher the mystic characters in which alone the lay of the future is written for our searching out . So important for a reasonable patriotism , so essential to an instinctive love of country , and so truly the foundation of all

Archæology.

rational improvement and renewal , is that full and accurate acquaintance with earlier times of which it is indeed our great object to study and preserve the records . And as the Bishop puts it so do we to-day take en the study of archaeology .

"Into that old past we love to look , because in it was life ; into it we dare to look , because that life is now in us—and that same gift we do believe we may pass to those beyond us . We , too , may and shall be ancients , and matter for history .

Let us yield ourselves with what freedom we may to the working of the power within us , and our deeds will harmonize with those wrought by the same power , through the noble spirits who have been before us . Let as only use them as examples and incentives , and not feebly and

blindly copy them as models . Let us visit the scenes of their departed greatness , not to array ourselves idly out in their worn-out customs , but that , having ears to gather up the whispers of their oracular advices , we may , by our own skill in art , by boldness in execution , fashion for ourselves the outward circumstances we need . "

Feeling , ourselves , deeply- the value and importance of archaeology generally , on the principles , too , so well laid down by that lamented and able prelate , Samuel Wilberforce , we propose in our next to consider the need and practical good of Masonic archaeology .

British Archæological Association.

BRITISH ARCH ? OLOGICAL ASSOCIATION .

Sunday , of caurse , was a dies non , so far as concerns the sittings of the congress proper ; and fortunately so , for it rained heavily till the early part of the forenoon . A considerable number of the party , however , had been invited by the guide on Saturday , Mr . W . C . Borlase , the nephew and successor to Dr . Borlase , the Cornish

antiquary , to pay him an afternoon visit at his seat of Castle Horneck , about a mile from the western extremity of the town . Here an agreeable surprise awaited them , for , on reaching ^ his hospitable doors , they found that he had turned his dining-room into a temporary museum , where he had laid out in exquisite order , and had carefully labelled and ticketed , one of the best and largest private

collections of antiquities to be found in the kingdom—a fitting compliment to his work on Cornwall , " Naenia Cornubiensis , " which he published not very long after coming of age , to say nothing of . lesser works in the same direction . He acted as interpreter on Saturday at the Boscaen circle . and at Rosemodress . It would be impossible here to give even an approximate list of the

many articles of interest , ranging from the Cornubia of ¦ ' prehistoric " times down to modern curiosities brought back lately from Japan in Her Majesty ' s ship Challenger , which were either hung on his walls or laid out upon the tables and sideboard . First , for the special delectation of ladies of antiquarian tastes , was a selection of foreign and English lace , including several specimens taken from the

robes of French ecclesiastics , and some English lace of the 15 th century , which represented Adam and Eve in Para dise . Here , too , was a delicate lace cap worn by Margaret of Anjou , and given by her as a token of gratitude for services rendered to her in distress to a maternal ancestor of the Borlase family . Then there was a magnificently carved

trousseau chest of formidable size from Holland , dated about 1620 , and capable of holding all the clothes of even two young ladies of the present day . Its three panels were " charged , " as the heralds would say , with a repre sentation of scenes from the story of Esther and Mordecai , in bold relief . Then the party were shown a variety of cinerary urns and other sepulchral and domestic furniture

celts and flint weapons , mostly tak ^ n from barrows dug up and excavated by the host in the far west of Cornwall ( though some few came from Oxfordshire and elsewhere ); blocks of tin from the Jews' House near Marazion ; roughly modelled lamps used by Cornish miners about the reign of King John , stone jars containing coins of Constantius , supposed by Mr . Borlase to belong to the third century

( though Mr . Bloxam , it is only fair to say , dissented from this opinion ); specimens of Roman , Samian , and Etruscan pottery , iron spear-heads , hammer heads of stone , certainly anterior to the Saxon times , stone lacrymatories or tearbottles , Roman lamps , scarabau , necklaces , bracelets , clasps , and other articles for the fastening of female apparel , & c . With these were several ecclesiastical

antiquities , the most interesting of which , perhaps , was a small wooden crucifix , roughly and rudely carved , which is said to have belonged to the Prior of Lewes in the time of the Conqueror , and is thought by Mr . Bloxam to Le as early as the nth century in date . We were also shown a piece of human skin , probably that of a sacrilegious Dane , which had been nailed , some eight or ten centuries

ago , on a church door in Essex . We say nothing of the miscellaneous assortment of iron spear-heads , and of flint instruments of war , of the chase , and of agriculture , but will only add that the gem of the whole collection seemed , by general consent , to be a magnificent vase of Etruscan workmanship—far lartrer than any specimen in the British

museum—adorned with pictures of animals . It is of very ancient date , and is supposed to be unique , or almost so . Mr . Borlase showed us , also , at least one jar or urn containing coins of the early Emperors , taken from one of the neighbouring hut villages—a fact which , as one of the party remarked , would almost seem to warrant the supposition that the dwellers in these rude subterraneous cavities