able to enrol among our Presidents a man like Professor Veitch, and I hope that the Society will always be able to command such service as he rendered it so unstintedly.

And now the time is come that I should restore to you the trust which you did me the honour to repose in me. As far as has lain in my power I have tried to discharge the duty required, I hope, with no regret on your part, that I have had it to do. If I am conscious of failures, I am also aware of much forbearance and goodwill, for which I thank you most gratefully.

For myself, I shall look back with the greatest pleasure and pride to having been thought worthy of your confidence, and to having occupied this chair; alas! that my having done so should now have become a piece of my own personal archæology. Whatever I may have wished to do, or ought to have done, is no longer in my power; to use the last words spoken by Roger Bacon's famous brazen head: "Time is past." I have, however, one more duty to discharge, the last that falls to me as your President: it is to propose my successor. Apart from being senior Vice-President, there is no one upon whom the office could be more fitly bestowed than upon one who has worked actively and well for the Society in all sorts of ways, and who has, besides, the qualification of being out and out a Glasgow man-by descent, birth, residence, sentiment, and of being deeply interested in the city itself, its people, history, and antiquities.

I am sure you will all respond heartily to the recommendation of the Council, that the next President be Mr. Colin Dunlop Donald. And so

having discharged all my duties, I resign the chair to him, and bid you all a regretful farewell.

TRANSACTIONS OF THE GLASGOW ARCHEOLOGICAL SOCIETY,

No. XXVI.

INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS

(SESSION 1894-95).

BY

COLIN DUNLOP DONALD, F.S.A. ScoT.,

PRESIDENT OF THE SOCIETY.

[Delivered at the Annual General Meeting held on 15th November, 1894]

In this age of analysis and questioning it behoves every one to be able to give a reason for the faith that is in him. Our faith as archæologists is very apt to be attacked by persons who are interested in nothing but what may be termed Commercial Zoology-the study of Bulls and Bears and Pigs, and such like. Now, have we a good and sufficient answer to such an attack? I venture to think that we have. Man does not live by bread alone. In all of us there is a spark of the diviner fire which the ordinary pursuits of business life do not satisfy. In all of us there is an imagination craving for work. It is a terribly true story that of Michael Scott and the fiend. You remember it? How Michael Scott had a familiar which would do his bidding so long as he found it in work, but the moment he failed to do so would tear him in pieces. Mr. Hill Burton says that every man of Anglo-Saxon race pays for his power and energy by having some such demon within him, which must be kept quiet by incessant work and interest. Where can you get a finer exercising ground for this demon than the wide field of archæology? Whatever a man is interested in, war or peace, castles or churches, manners or customs, faith or rituals, all are there waiting to be examined, and the more one knows the more one wants to know, until, at last, you come to the wholesome conclusion of how little you really know at all. One of the great glories and uses of archæology is, that it gives full play to the imagination,

and so greatly increases our harmless pleasures. Do not misunderstand me when I use the word "imagination." I do not mean that uncontrolled by, and careless of facts, we should let our fancy run riot in the absurdities that of old brought ridicule on antiquarianism, that changed the Kaim of Kinprunes into the Castra pruinis, and invented the bloody rites of imaginary Druids. I mean that constructive imagination which, on a solid basis of fact, sees analogies and, with keen intuition, bridges over the chasm between two isolated facts; or looking at a host of separate instances detects, amidst a strange diversity, the similarity that binds them together. What a grand field for the imagination, is afforded to him, who climbs the steep ditch and stands on the wall cut out of the living rock that sweeps round old Sarum, or who lingers through a long summer afternoon under mysterious Stonehenge. Where can imagination have wider play than in visiting such places as Tantallon, the mighty stronghold of our grimmest nobles, or Bolton, for so long the prison of Queen Mary? Craigmillar, Leven, Fotheringay, Kenilworth -are they not all names to conjure with? Sir Walter Scott, who has done so much to quicken our feelings in these matters, felt this strongly. remember his lines on Neidpath, how he saw in his mind's eye the

"Foragers who, with headlong force,

Down from that strength had spurr'd their horse,
Their Southern rapine to renew

Far in the distant Cheviots blue,

And home returning filled the hall,

With revel, wassail, rout, and brawl.

Methought that still with tramp and clang

The gateway's broken arches rang;

Methought grim features, seamed with scars,
Glared through the windows rusty bars."

You

Men never made a greater mistake than when they called archæology dry. Properly studied, it is fuller of romantic interest than even astronomy. For in its ultimate essence it concerns itself with man in the far-off ages and dark abysm of time. Take for instance, that subject, the Scottish Roman Wall, to which we have been giving so much attention. It gives rise to hosts of interesting questions and speculations. No one can study that wall, without being urged on to study also the Roman system of making war and of fortification; the

state of Scotland when it was built, and the exact object in building it, and the method of garrisoning and defending it. From this wall, we are led perforce to study the greater wall in England, which is so full of interesting problems and the relics from which have thrown so much light on the nature of the Roman occupation, Roman life and Roman provincial art. The mere sight of that massy wall of hewn stone, pursuing its course straight on over hill and dale, gives one a clearer idea of Roman power, and Roman thoroughness than can ever be got from books, however vivid and however numerous.

To come nearer home, to whom is the border country more of an enchanted land than to the archaeologist. For him every hill-fort, every standing stone, every ruined peel and abbey has its story. Suppose he walks up the valley of the Yarrow, his mind is filled with thoughts of

Great old houses

And fights fought long ago.

He can examine Newark, and see how a border chief was lodged and how he fortified himself. He passes the Dowie Dens of Yarrow and remembers how

"Late at e'en drinking the wine,

And ere they paid the lawing,
They set a combat them between
To fight it in the dawing."

And he sees the great grey standing stone memento of a fight still older. Higher up in a green side valley, he can trace the crumbling fragments of the Blackhouse Tower and call to mind the intolerable pathos of the Douglas tragedy.

A knowledge of the past, an interest in the past, these the archeologist carries with him wherever he goes. With them no journey can be dull or profitless, for everywhere are to be found traces and remains of the past ages. Traces and remains that show to us the manner of men they were who lived and loved, and fought and died, in the far off years; and it is this human interest that gives life and glow to archæology. Mr. Ruskin has well said"For, indeed, the greatest glory of a building is not in its stones, nor in its "gold, Its glory is in its age, and in that deep sense of voice fulness, of stern "watching, of mysterious sympathy, nay, even of approval or condemnation, "which we feel in walls that have long been washed by the passing waves of

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"humanity. It is in their lasting witness against men, in their quiet contrast "with the transitional character of all things, in the strength which, through "the lapse of seasons and times, and the decline and birth of dynasties, and "the changing of the face of the earth, and of the limits of the sea, maintains "its sculptured shapeliness for a time insuperable, connects forgotten and "following ages with each other, and half constitutes the identity, as it "concentrates the sympathy of nations; it is in that golden stain of time "that we are to look for the real light and colour and preciousness of architecture; and it is not until a building has assumed this character, till it has "been entrusted with the fame, and hallowed by the deeds of men, till its "walls have been witnesses of suffering, and its pillars rise out of the shadows "of death, that its existence, more lasting as it is than that of the natural objects of the world around it, can be gifted with ever so much as these possess of language and of life." In another passage, on the effect produced on him by a scene in the Jura-"The writer well remembers the sudden "blankness and chill, which were cast upon it, when he endeavoured, in "order more strictly to arrive at the sources of its impressiveness, to imagine "it for a moment, a scene in some aboriginal forest of the New Continent. "The flowers in an instant lost their light, the river its music, the hills "became oppressively desolate, a heaviness in the boughs of the darkened forest, showed how much of their former power had been dependent upon "a life which was not theirs, how much the glory of the imperishable or "continually renewed creation is reflected from things more precious in their "memories than its renewing. Those ever-springing flowers and ever-flowing "streams have been dyed by the deep colours of human endurance, valour, "and virtue; and the crests of the sable hills, that rose against the evening "sky, received a deeper worship, because their far shadows fell eastward over "the iron wall of Joux, and the four-square keep of Granson."

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But archæology has another claim to be valued in this age of fierce strife and competition.

If a man be engaged in business, there is nothing healthier for him, than to have an interest in things outside of his business; and if a man have the blessed gift of leisure, it soon turns into a curse, if he do not know how to occupy that leisure. I do not know which is most to be pitied, the man of