Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 5.djvu/168

 126 THE HALL OF OAKHAM. this standard of minute investigation, they are entitled to confidence or disregard. The remote pedigree, the antique weapon, the ruinous pile, the grass o'ergrowii entrenchment, the verdant tumulus, the cairn and the cromlech silvered with the lichens of ages, worthless though they may seem to eyes which are content to judge from the mere passing and out- ward appearance of things, are to the more highly gifted powerful excitements to reflection, and they become effica- cious materials of thought ; they cement the present with the past, and speak with the voice of prophecy respecting the future ; they are the homely looking harbingers of a brilliant procession of ideas, grou])mg together all nations of mankind, raising into view races which have become extinct, bringing into notice the attributes of language, habits, and destiny, and throwing a flash of abiding light on points of darkness, which the mental eye has hitherto been unable to pierce. The names of Camden and of Usher, of Spelman, Prynne, and Dugdale, who have explained with such varied learning the primitive institutions of their country, will be held in veneration as long as there exists any feeling for the blessings enjoyed under the British constitution. Nor setting these authorities aside, can it be asserted with any semblance of justice, that these pursuits tend to narrow the conceptions or restrict the ideas in their search after truth. Whilst indeed they teach us how most properly to value our own dynamical polity, they are also the means of shewing us upon what a solid but yet expansive foundation all the public rights and social relations of Englishmen are based. And we have been worse than inattentive observers of recent occurrences, if they have not elicited from our own hearts a holier feeling of acknoAvledgment, than the bare confession of our superiority in these respects over the other civilized nations of the world. To return, however, to the immediate object of this narra- tive, which has been interrupted by what I have endeavoured to persuade myself is an apology for the harsh outline I am about to sketch ; it appears that Oakham at the time of the Conqueror's survey was set down in the wapentake of "Mar- tinslei. This is not a very usual title of local jurisdiction, though when resolved into its primitive meaning it indicates much the same as the division into hundreds. By this title Alfred ordained that a particular division should furnisli a hundred men at arms for his wars, or a hundred, men of