Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 6.djvu/13



N commencing a new year, and, with it, the sixth volume of their Journal, the Central Committee of the Archaeological Institute feel that they may justly congratulate their constituents on the increased, and steadily increasing, prosperity of the Institute itself, not less than on the great advance which has taken place in Scientific Archaeology. Still more do they feel justified in looking forward with confidence to a more extended sphere of usefulness and a more energetic action. They have the cheering conviction that sound ideas are becoming daily more widely disseminated, and a clearer insight attained, into the genuine aims and necessary limits of Archaeological study: and they can congratulate themselves and their fellow-labourers in this field on having been brought into a nearer communion with those who in every part of the Continent of Europe, have already established an efficient organisation for similar purposes. On every side there is evidence of a generous and earnest co-operation among those who have devoted themselves to special pursuits; and not only does this tend of itself to widen the general basis, but it supplies the individual thinker with an ever-widening foundation for his own special study. Doubtless our condition is very different now from what it was, when a few amiable and eccentric men first set about "collecting curiosities."

We shall not undervalue these pioneers on our track, or criticise their method. We owe to them, if nothing more, at least this service, that they handed on the torch from man to man—dim perhaps and faintly glimmering, yet never