Scotland, in transferring to the Crown for public use their valuable collection of antiquities at Edinburgh. The other is the institution, in the British Museum, of a separate Section, under distinct superintendence, for British and Mediæval Antiquities. The public recognition of the claims of a subject so peculiarly national in its characteristics and bearings, yet so long unaccountably neglected, and the organization of a central agency for its cultivation, may assist in promoting a more scientific method of research than it has as yet received from the undisciplined aid of its irregular votaries. In respect to system, classical Archaeology has been hitherto much in advance. The genius of Greek and Roman literature has exercised a commanding supremacy over the study even of the unwritten monuments of Greece and Rome, and imparted to the secondary science the breadth, simplicity, and precision, which characterize the principal. Our own country has not been wanting in achievements in this field. It may be permitted to refer to the Dictionaries edited by Dr. Smith, as models of analytical method, from which the student of our national antiquities might well borrow a suggestion. The first requisite at present is a more exact classification of the objects which are the foundation of our inquiries, with reference to their original localities, their age, use, and artistic fabric; and this will of itself lead to the supply of the second desideratum, a more fixed and definite terminology. In the primæval period, especially, Archaeology has hitherto effected but little of discovery. It is but recently that the basis of a chronological classification has been recognized in the material of the earliest remains, whether stone, bronze, or iron. The antiquities of the Danish people, both in Denmark and elsewhere, have lately received much light from the researches of M. Worsaäe: let us hope that an Island, which, together with the monuments of the Viking, is rich in the remains of three other independent races, will not fail to carry into further regions the investigation thus commenced.
In the remaining division of Archaeological inquiry. which is directed primarily to the interests of Art and Manufacture, a distinction must be noticed between the Fine, or Ornamental, and the Mechanical Arts. In the former, especially in Architecture, both classical and mediaeval, the monuments of ancient skill have received, in England and abroad, ample
