Page:Surrey Archaeological Collections Volume 1.djvu/78

 eminent in the fame of sound archæological research. So full is the county of interesting record, that a little systematic organization of local committees in connection with the main Society, cannot fail materially to enrich our national annals by allowing individual taste to contribute to common knowledge. The history of ancient progresses, the Southwark mummings at the "Tabard," the hardly obsolete classic ceremony relative to betrothal at Ockley, the elucidation of Roman relics and Saxon manufactures, the collection and collation of MSS., the examination of pictorial relics, sacred emblems, genealogical archives; these, and a myriad other sources of national investigation, may be individually followed up by the properly organized combination of local committees.

Surrey is the largest artery emanating from the great metropolitan heart, and may well be regarded as receiving the earliest pulsations, in all ages, of the influences which stirred the people. The study, therefore, of such subjects as its topographical history presents cannot fail to instruct whilst it entertains, and to contribute to moral as well as to intellectual excellence. For the past is a torch to the present; biography is but the mirror of self-knowledge, and antiquity only our own footsteps in other shoes. All we have to do is to select our materials with judgment, and to pursue them with caution, gathering up the ravelled skein with care, and weaving with dexterity and sound knowledge a consistent tissue out of the torn and twisted fragments of old times; since, to apply the striking words of the greatest contemporary poet, though