totally extinguished. They have delivered it to us: but, as we are the inheritors of the past, so are we, most assuredly, called upon to use our inheritance in a wise and generous manner. And most of all it is incumbent upon us clearly to comprehend the nature of our mission and the limits of our field. We are but collectors, even as our predecessors were; but we are collectors with a definite purpose, and in a definite method. It is our business to rescue from neglect and ruin the fragmentary remains which tell of the past, but, unlike them, we group these facts by a system, class them as it were in genera and families, and by a stern induction wring from them a portion at least of the secrets which lie hid within the mists of ages. And to this comprehensive method we owe it that there can be nothing exclusive in our proceeding: it is enough for the Archaeologist that any one fact should be a fact of the past; and it is enough for science that such one fact should be capable of arrangement and comparison with any one similar fact, or any number of them. From that moment it becomes lawful prize of the Archaeologist. In his estimation an old song is as valuable as an arch Pointed or Round. An Anglo-Saxon, or Norman, or Early English spell, prayer, law, legend, nay, even word, has its profound meaning: so has a mullion, a corbel, a clerestory, a whole cathedral. So has a cabinet of medals, a pot, a pan, a battle-axe, or a woman's jewel, if properly appreciated, without exaggeration, and above all, without exclusiveness. But in one sense only is their value the same,—as different letters of the alphabet by which we spell the history of the land: the history of the land itself only a letter of the alphabet by which we spell the history of man: the history of man itself only a portion of that larger alphabet by which we spell the history of God's dealings with the world.
It is necessary—and it is full time,—that a large view should be taken of these questions, and not a narrow one: if ever Archaeological pursuits come to be considered as an end in themselves, and not as a means to an end, they dwindle down at once into laborious trifling, which has at all times received the ridicule it merited. According to the import-
