Antiquarian

“ History, in any other aspect, hardly rises above antiquarianism, though I am far from holding that even simple antiquarianism, even the merest scraping together of local and genealogical detail, is necessarily antiquarian rubbish. ”

“ For the student of manners, and of the old language and literature, it has much interest of a purely antiquarian order. To say of an ancient literary composition that it has an antiquarian interest, often means that it has no distinct aesthetic interest for the reader of to-day. Antiquarianism, by a purely historical effort, by putting its object in perspective, and setting the reader in a certain point of view, from which what gave pleasure to the past is pleasurable for him also, may often add greatly to the charm we receive from ancient literature. ”

“ CHAPTER THE FIRST. THE BRITONS—THE ROMANS—INVASION BY JULIUS CÆSAR. IT has always been the good fortune of the antiquarian who has busied himself upon the subject of our ancestors, that the total darkness by which they are overshadowed, renders it impossible to detect the blunderings of the antiquarian himself, who has thus been allowed to grope about the dim twilight of the past, and entangle himself among its cobwebs, without any light being thrown upon his errors. ”

“ VI. RELICS OF ABORIGINAL ART IN WESTERN NEW-YORK.
[Antique insignia, amulets, implements and ornaments.]
It will tend to render the work of antiquarian examination exact, and facilitate comparison, if names descriptive of the general classes and species of each object of archæological inquiry be introduced. No science can advance if the terms and definitions of it be left vague. The mere inception of this design is here announced; it is not proposed, at present, to do more than submit a few specimens from a large number of antiquarian articles, the result of many years’ accumulation. ”

“ The antiquarian supports his dignity with a solemn aspect; he treats a sin and a smile as synonimous; one half of which has been discarded from his childhood. If a smile in the house of religion, or of mourning, be absurd, is there any reason to expel it from those places where it is not? A tale will generally allow of two ingredients, information and amusement: but the historian and the antiquarian have, from time immemorial, used but one. ”

“ At the same time the antiquarian may here occupy himself with the examination of the rude relics of antiquity, which lie scattered on all sides—nothing is more pleasing than that sacred enthusiasm which is kindled in the mind by the contemplation of the faded monuments of past ages, and surely no spot was ever more congenial to such sensations. ”

“ I am not aware of anything, in the life of Peter Faneuil, which that mantle will not abundantly cover.
It may be otherwise. If the schoolmaster is not always abroad, the antiquarian is—the moral virtuoso—who delights, metaphorically speaking, to find spots on snow, and specks in amber. This species of antiquarian, male or female, may be found in every city and village. It is a curious creature, and, in the cabinet of a malicious memory, has stowed carefully away the weak points, and the peccadilloes of the living and the dead. ”

“ Those who have hitherto paid no attention to antiquarian pursuits, or may have treated with contempt what appeared to them the useless or speculative labours of the antiquary, may, it is hoped, be taught that his object is, in its way, of as high a reach as that of others who are allowed to be worthy labourers in the field of history. ”

“ When in former times our ancestors thought of an antiquarian, they described him as occupied with coins and medals and Druids' stones. But now there are other relics; indeed all matter is become such. Man himself has to the eye of science become an antiquity. ”

“ The antiquary of old was but, in many instances, "a gatherer of other men's stuff;" whereas the archæologist of the present day adds to the worth of antiquarian studies by placing their results in new lights, and thus extending the utility and amusement which they afford. ”

“ This is the best antiquarian handbook we have ever met with—so clear is its arrangement, and so well and so plainly is each subject illustrated by well-executed engravings, that confusion for the future is impossible upon a variety of points on which the most grievous mistakes have hitherto been made by anxious and zealous antiquarians. * * * It is the joint production of two men who have already distinguished themselves as authors and antiquarians. ”

“ To examine the origin of these tales is not more ‘superstitious’ than to examine the origin of the religious and heroic mythologies of the world. It is, of course, easy to give both mythology, and ‘the science of spectres,’ the go by. But antiquaries will be inquiring, and these pursuits are more than mere ‘antiquarian old womanries’. We follow the stream of fable, as we track a burn to its head, and it leads us into shy, and strange scenes of human life, haunted by very fearful wild-fowl, and rarely visited save by the credulous. ”

“ Nevertheless, accident may make an Antiquary, as good as another, out of anybody whose boyish education has given him, willy nilly, some knowledge of the elder world. Let him be thrown, for example, in early manhood, much into lands whose ancient monuments conspicuously exalt the past at the expense of the present. The necessary curiosity can grow within him, disposing his mind to study antiquarian detail as a duty, and, in time, a pleasure; and through apprenticeship he may learn and love the trade to which he was not born. ”

“ No end has been written with every resource of antiquarian research over the form and details of the ancient ways of draping, for although men as a rule do not permit themselves to chatter much over fashion in their clothes, the kind of cloth, border, cut, and every other such detail, yet they find ample justification from the antiquarian standpoint for treating these trifling matters also as important, and of talking about them with even greater prolixity than is permitted to woman herself in her unchallenged field of supremacy. ”

“ It is one of the painful duties of the antiquarian to dispel many a popular belief, and to probe the groundlessness of many an historical statement. The antiquarian is sometimes disposed to ask with Pilate, “What is truth?” when he finds historical facts crumbling beneath his touch into mythological fables ”

“ You, as an Archæological Society, should endeavour to remedy this state of things. The great object of antiquarian research should be, to supply the want we now feel in regard to our history. We hear a great deal of the instruction of the million, about which everybody is mad nowadays. ”

“ The pursuit of antiquarianism has always flourished in England since her inhabitants have enjoyed sufficient culture to be aware that they possessed a past. Even the poetry of Layamon is in a certain measure antiquarian, and Chaucer, Spenser, Milton appear progressively more and more leavened with antiquarian sentiment, which, as a factor of literary inspiration, attains perhaps its highest conceivable development in the works of Robert Burton and Sir Thomas Browne. The Restoration period produced no such examples of antiquarian men of genius ”

“ Besides the antiquarian relics of a visible and tangible form to which I have adverted, as demanding investigation and collection on our part, there are various antiquarian relics of a non-material type in Scottish Archæology which this Society might perhaps do much to collect and preserve, through the agency of active committees, and the assistance of many of our countrymen, who, I doubt not, could be easily incited to assist us in the required work. ”

“ However much variety or novelty may add to the interest attached to antiquarian discoveries, it must never be forgotten that their scientific value is to be determined by the extent to which they can be made to enrich our knowledge of the past phases of human civilisation. ”

“ The numerous societies established of late years all over the kingdom, for the express purpose of advancing these objects, are a proof of the value that is now being attributed to such inquiries, while the spirit in which they are conducted tends to elevate antiquarian studies far above the character which they formerly had of mere learned but unprofitable trifling. ”

“ Individuals deep in antiquarian lore have very praiseworthily puzzled themselves and their readers in vain, in their endeavours to ascertain to their satisfaction how this wonderful pastime sprang into existence. ”

“ All the markings and relics of man, in the dim and distant past, which industry and science can possibly extract from these and from other analogous sources, Archæology carefully collects, arranges, and generalises, stimulated by the fond hope that through such means she will yet gradually recover more and more of the earlier chronicles and lost annals of the human race, and of the various individual communities and families of that race.
The objects of antiquarian research embrace events and periods, many of which are placed within the era of written evidence ”

“ There have been imputations cast upon societies like this, and some degree of ridicule has been thrown upon the objects which they have in view. Now this arises from a mistake existing in the minds of many as to what are the objects of antiquarian research, and what are its true purposes. It is not for the mere collection of the remains of antiquity or archæological curiosities,—for this would only be an amusement, if attended with nothing else. The real merit of archæology is, that it elucidates the history of the country ”

“ The primeval antiquities, to use a term which distinguishes the earliest period from that which is more recent, have essential characters assigned to them, and include all those massive structures of whose origin no authentic record has been obtained or discovered. The early antiquarian remains in these islands belong to a period connected with that which has usually been called British, Gaulish, Cymric, and Celtic, and were certainly the works of the primeval race which inhabited them. ”

“ Those who have never had any leaning towards antiquarian research have no idea of the enormous business done in this way—not only in reference to great cases of this kind, but in reference to matters that would appear to an outsider as absolutely not worth a thought. ”

“ Whatever was old was absurd; and Gothic—an epithet applied to all medieval art, philosophy, or social order—became a simple term of contempt." But an antiquarian is naturally a conservative, and men soon began to love the times whose peculiarities they were so diligently studying. Men of imaginative minds promptly made the discovery that a new source of pleasure might be derived from these dry records. ”

“ Without this precaution, Archæological explorations and antiquarian research are expended in vain. Fanciful explanations, ad captandum, can only become an ignis fatuus, or mis-direction, leading the benighted traveller far out of the right way. ”

“ We have reason to be grateful, that the researches of the Antiquarian in our own country, have furnished the lovers of Ethnological lore, with much valuable material for the development of a science which has, within a few short years, arrived at an eminent degree of importance. ”

“ His principal antiquarian discovery was in the differentiation of a class of prehistoric antiquities to which he applied the term 'Late Celtic,' and he rightly claimed that the highest development of this special form of art was to be found in our islands. ”

“ Considering the value of their collections and the difficulty and expense which often has attended their acquisition, it may most truly be affirmed that they have generally manifested a most liberal desire to make them known, and instrumental in forwarding the great objects which antiquarian pursuits are intended and are so peculiarly calculated to advance. ”

“ To this fact many a museum can bear ample testimony. The antiquarian enjoys intense satisfaction in his labors of research, and when he is rewarded by the discovery of something new, he is but stimulated to renewed exertion. In the old world rich fields have been, and are now being explored; and in the new laborers are not wanting. ”

“ The first consequence of this is that we become able to make the largest and most general comparison of human conditions which has ever been possible to humanity, nor does this [Pg 25] ability regard the present alone. The unveiling of the treasures of the past, the interpretation of its experience and doctrine which we owe to the scholar and archæologist, enable us to compare remote antiquity with the things of the last minute. The work of antiquarian science culminates in the discovery of the prehistoric man. ”

“ This onset gave the antiquaries no stomach to encounter Rab Innes, and they precipitately took a direction which separated them equally from Rab Innes and young Rantletrees, leaving the R. I. L. in quiet possession of the field.
Now, Mr Editor, you must not suppose that I intend to throw any discredit upon your Antiquarian Repertory. Quite the reverse. All that I mean to deduce from what I have said is, a caution to you against being taken in by a gudewife's "kail-pat" for a "Roman camp-kettle," or by the landmark betwixt two decent cock lairds for a Romani Imperii Limes. ”

“ The unhappy complications in Eastern Europe of a few years ago have at least brought forth some good results to antiquarian research. Thessaly having been ceded to Greece, learned men at Athens are already taking steps for the preservation of any objects of interest whieh may be brought to light on that classic soil. ”

“ There is perhaps no subject on which antiquarians have more employed their learning and industry, on which their theories have been so fruitful, or their discussions so endless, as on the origin and history of those ancient stones generally denominated Druidical. ”