To collect the implements, weapons, pottery, costume, and furniture of races is to contribute materials not only to the history of mining, metallurgy, spinning, weaving, dyeing, carpentry, and the like arts, which minister to civilisation, but also to illustrate the physical history of the countries where these arts were practised.
The history of an art involves more or less that of its raw material; whether that material is native or imported, has been turned to the best account, or misused and squandered, are questions ultimately connected with the history of finance, agriculture, and commerce, and hardly to be solved without constant reference to the Monumental Evidence of Archaeology. I will not detain you longer with this part of the subject; those who wish to know why a spear-head or a stone hammer are as interesting to an Archaeologist as fossils to the Geologist, should visit the museum at Copenhagen, and read M. Worsaae's little work on Scandinavian antiquities, its result;—should learn how the Etruscan remains in the Museo Gregoriano of the Vatican illustrate Homer,—and the remains of Pompeii in the Museo Borbonico present to us Roman life in the Augustan age.
I have endeavoured, in these remarks, to present to you an outline, however slight, of the whole subject-matter of Archaeology,—a sketch of its Oral, Written, and Monumental Evidence.
In treating of these three branches, my object has not been so much to explain how they may be severally best collected, classified, and interpreted, as to show by a few examples the historical results to which such previous labours, duly and conscientiously carried out, will lead; the relation of Archaeology to History, as a ministering and subsidiary study, as the key to stores of information inaccessible or unknown to the scholar, as an independent witness to the truth of Printed Record.
I have said nothing of the qualifications required of the Archaeologist, the conditions under which he works, the instruments and appliances on which he depends. He who would master the manifold subject-matter of Archaeology, and appreciate its whole range and compass, must possess a mind in which the reflective and the perceptive faculties are duly balanced; he must combine with the aesthetic culture of the Artist, and the trained judgment of the Historian, not a little
