outcome of the whole dealing of the archeologist with his materials is thus the construction of a logical history of the human occupation of the area which he subjects to investigation—that is, a history which is not chronological, and can never become so, unless where it touches the domain of record, and by this contact acquires an accidental feature which is foreign to its character.

Throughout this series of Lectures the bearing of these principles and the application of these methods will be constantly illustrated. But it was necessary in the outset to show that the study of archæology is not merely the observation of phenomena and the classification of specimens, and also to establish the fact that there are certain principles and methods on the observance of which the scientific nature of the study depends. For it is obvious that if the observations by which materials for comparison and induction are accumulated have not been scientifically made, the conclusions drawn from them can have no scientific value, and that the first necessity in every scientific inquiry is accurate observation, exhaustive in its range, and recorded with the requisite precision and fulness of detail. This seems an easy condition of scientific success, but it is not so, for, in reality, the faculty of exhaustive and accurate observation is one of the rarest of rare attainments,1 and even among scientific men it is never fully developed without a long course of training and experience. It follows from this that in dealing with phenomena that are known only from the descriptions of other observers, it is always necessary to discriminate sharply between statements that are the products of precise observation and statements that are the products of vague impression or general inference. For

1 It was the absence of this, as well as the presence of a fatal facility for drawing conclusions from irrelevant evidence, that made the Antiquary of a bygone age the laughing-stock of the literary world, and gave pungency and zest to the satire with which he was everywhere assailed.

"the work of science is to substitute facts for phenomena and demonstrations for impressions, and, in fact, the phenomena are of use to it only in so far as they lead to facts." This has never been more forcibly illustrated than by Ruskin, when, in his eloquent way, he discriminates between the artistic and the scientific attitudes of mind, the one contenting itself with the study of the phenomena only, for the pleasure which they give as phenomena, while the other is content only when it gets at the facts which lie behind the phenomena, and of which the phenomena are the visible expression. Their description, therefore, is not the end for which the science exists, but the means to that end. We are not to revel in mere wonderment of observation, in admiration of the curious, the unique, the interesting, or the antique. These are but the accidents and incidents of the journey on which we have embarked, and not the objects for which it was undertaken.

And, as the investigation on which we thus enter is actually analogous to a journey into unknown regions, the safest way of estimating our positions as we advance will always be by reckoning back to the starting-point. Hence I shall invert the order usually followed in archæological expositions, and, instead of beginning at the beginning, which is completely unknown, I shall start from that border-land where the historic and the non-historic meet, and try to work my way backwards as far as the light reflected from the present will guide me into the past. We shall thus be in the position of ascending, instead of descending the stream of time, and the chief advantage of this method will be that we shall not at once find ourselves surrounded by objects that are completely strange or unknown, but will gradually proceed from those that are well known to others that are less known, finding always as we advance that while we are leaving behind us objects with features and characteristics that are familiar, we

are also in equal measure becoming familiarised with others that are new and strange.

I have chosen the reign of David I., or, more broadly, the twelfth century, as the general starting-point, because the border-land which lies between the historic and the non-historic begins here to become definitely historic. When we go beyond this boundary we take leave of nearly all the common materials of history. Charters and records of public acts in the administration of the civil government cease. The feudal system with its titular distinctions and territorial aristocracy, and the ecclesiastical system with its hierarchical distinctions and territorial jurisdictions, which colour all the history of the Middle Ages, also leave us. Architecture itself leaves us. The cities and towns of historic name and locality mostly leave us. Even the very coinage leaves us, and instead of things which give dates and incidents, we have only things which give types and systems. But we shall be able to trace these types and systems fading into each other in regular sequence, the more complex gradually losing their complexity, until we arrive at the primitive elements from which this many-sided culture and this highly developed civilisation have been slowly produced by successive additions of acquirement to acquirement and experience to experience. And in thus tracing these advanced types and complex systems back through ever-lessening gradations of advancement and complexity, we shall also trace the stream of civilisation upwards till the tide which now flows broad and deep is represented by a feeble rill emerging from the primeval forest frequented by the stone men. We shall thus pass in succession the sources of all the arts, the culture, and the institutions that are the feeders of the main stream, and have united to swell its progress; and, as each of these affluents is left behind, we shall mark the river diminishing in volume, and note that the relics of human life along its banks become rarer and ruder,

and differ more and more widely from those we have been accustomed to meet with.

Thus, though not passing beyond the bounds of our own country, it will be as if we traversed many strange lands, inhabited by unknown tribes existing in different stages of culture, exhibiting various patterns of civilisation, and practising arts and industries, or possessing systems and institutions that are now wholly unknown. For, as the traveller in unexplored regions occasionally meets with tribes or communities practising customs which are peculiar to themselves, so, likewise, in thus tracing back the long succession of our ancestry, we will occasionally encounter among them generations of men who did things that were never done anywhere else, invented systems peculiar to themselves, and asserted their individuality of character in the most pronounced and unmistakable manner.

Our route will lead us first by the sites of the ecclesiastical settlements of the early Christianisers of Pagan Scotland, with the object of investigating the arts and culture, the systems and civilisation, that then prevailed. The character and situation of the earliest edifices of the Celtic church will disclose the features of a transition time, and reveal some of the characteristics of its peculiar institutions. On lonely isles, bleak, barren, and inaccessible, we shall meet with the rude oratory, and the still ruder beehive-shaped bothies of the brotherhood of clerics, or the stone-roofed cell of the anchorite, self-doomed to the solitude of a desert in the ocean. The discovery of all the sites associated with the founders of the faith in Scotland is of itself a lengthened research, even when assisted by the sheets of the Ordnance Survey;1 and it

1 "Benign reader, hast thou seen, studied, and digested this exquisitely laboured and faithful performance of high art—this Ordnance Survey? Or is it that after your Government has, at your bidding, spent a treasure in the doing of it, it is to you a scaled book, a dead letter, a bit of mere abstract or complimentary 'justice to your national vanity'? No, let it be not so; but

will suffice us to investigate a few that are typical of the rest. But in doing this it will become sufficiently apparent that, of all the phenomena recorded by the Ordnance Survey, there is none more striking than that which almost every sheet of its maps reveals, that there were men living in the country in times that are almost prehistoric, who, by the force of their character and the work of their lives, have stamped their names everlastingly on every page of its topography.1 We shall meet occasionally with other relics that are still called by their names, such as books, and bells, and crosiers, and shrines, and each of these we shall examine with careful scrutiny, because they have much to tell of the culture of the time, and of the phases by which the systems peculiar to the early Celtic church were gradually eliminated from her constitution. They will also introduce us to the remains of that school of early art that arose and flourished among the Celtic Scots, when art in Europe was well-nigh dead. Among these remains we shall meet with a series of monumental sculptures of a class which exists in no other country in the world, and exhibiting a system of mysterious symbolism which is found in no land but our own. We shall find the characteristic designs of this school of art pervading the decoration of the

Read it over and Put it to use, and

learn to value it rather in justice both to it and to yourself. over; not a word is there in it but has a story to tell you. it will lead you, not wantonly, but considerately, and just at the needfullest moment, away from strife and lazy home moping, into quiet, into fresh air, into fresh thought, into contact with new objects of interest, into more enlarged acquaintance and sympathy with your own flesh, into a more perfect and loving knowledge of your own dear peculiar spot of mother earth, and what it really has and may justly be proud of."-Muir's Characteristics, p. 182.

1 Dr. Reeves has remarked that the contrast between the parochial nomenclature of the east and west sides of Scotland is very striking. On the east the names are for the most part secular, and derived from the Pictish Age. On the west they are generally ecclesiastical in their origin, combining with the prefix Kil the name of some commemorated Irish Saint.-"Notice of the Isle of Sanda," Proc. R. I. A., vol. viii. p. 132.