303 ANNUAL MEETING

Tuesday, Sept. 9. The General Meeting was held at 12 o'clock at >St. John's Room, the County Hall not being found large enough to contain the numbers attending the proceedings. The lower parts of the walls of this large room were covered with some excellent rubbings of interesting brasses, principally by the Rev. E. Hill, Student of Christ Church, Oxford, and the Rev. H. Ad- dington. There were also casts from the curious fonts in Winchester cathedi'al, and the church at East Meon ; the figures on the latter giving a very rude representation of the Creation and Fall of Man. The President, attended by the members of the several Committees, having entered the room, ascended the platform, and the business of the meeting commenced. The Marquis of NoKTHAMPTOisr, having taken the chair, addressed the meeting. He said it was his pleasing duty to open the proceedings of this meeting, which from what he saw in that room would prove as gratifying as its most earnest promoters could wish. He should not enter into a discussion on the nature and value of the study of archseology, for that subject would be much more ably handled by the reverend gentleman who would follow him, the Dean of Westminster. He might be allowed, however, to repeat what had been said by others before him, that archaeology was the handmaid of history — without her, history would be a mere skeleton ; but archseology served to re-animate the dry bones of facts, and to give a colouring where all was lifeless before. Without dwelling further on that subject, he would now notice one or two charges that had been made against the Association. A statement had gone abroad that this was a political meeting, but the notion was in itself so peifectly ridiculous that he did not feel in the slightest manner called upon to deny it. It had been said it was a polemical meeting. For this also there was no foundation. It was true that it was very numer- ously attended by the clergy, of whom he Avas proud to see so many around him ; and that ecclesiastical monuments must naturally be interesting to them could not be doubted. They had only to look at the work of WilHam of Wykeham, and at the beautiful church of St. Cross so near to them, when it would be evident that not only pi-ofessional, but architectural and archseological motives had brought them together, and not polemics. If any difierences of opinion had arisen among the members of the Established Church, those present were not met to enter into any discussion ujion them, but[!to call on all to join in maintaining those sacred edifices which had been raised, it was impossible to doubt, by a sincere piety, although ac- companied with the superstition of a dark age, and which proved the great excellence of architecture exalted at a time when other arts were in com- parative debasement. The society might, if they pleased, discuss the Avars of the Roses, but Avith the Avars of the 19th century they had nothing what- ever to do ; and if they at all entered into the religious differences of the past, still they could not into those of the present. With minor complaints he would not trouble them It Avas not for them then to consider any dif-