But let it not be thought that if I have striven to retrieve from the dust and gloom of antiquity, the remembrance of old things that are worthy; that I feel any love for the superstition with which we find them blended. There is much that is good connected with those times; talent even that is worth imitating, and art that we may be proud to learn, which is beginning after the elapse of centuries to arrest the attention of the ingenious, and the love of these, naturally revive with the discovery; but we need not fear in this resurrection of old things of other days, that the superstition and weakness of the middle ages; that the veneration for dry bones and saintly dust, can live again. I do not wish to make the past assume a superiority over the present; but I think a contemplation of mediæval art would often open a new avenue of thought and lead to many a pleasing and profitable discovery; I would too add the efforts of my feeble pen to elevate and ennoble the fond pursuit of my leisure hours. I would say one word to vindicate the lover of old musty writings, and the explorer of rude antiquities, from the charge of unprofitableness, and to protect him from the sneer of ridicule. For whilst some see in the dry studies of the antiquary a mere inquisitiveness after forgotten facts and worthless relics; I can see, nay, have felt, something morally elevating in the exercise of these inquiries. It is not the mere fact which may sometimes be gained by rubbing off the parochial whitewash from ancient tablets, or the encrusted oxide from monumental brasses, that render the study of ancient relics so attractive; but it is the deductions which may sometimes be drawn from them. The light which they sometimes cast on obscure parts of history, and the fine touches of human sensibility, which their eulogies and monodies bespeak, that instruct or elevate the mind, and make the student's heart beat with holier and loftier feelings. But it is not my duty here to enter into the motives, the benefits, or the most profitable manner of studying antiquity; if it were, I would strive to show how much superior it is to become an original investigator, a practical antiquary, than a mere borrower from others. For the most delightful moments of the student's course is when he rambles personally among the ruins and remnants of long gone ages; sometimes painful are such sights, even deeply so; but never to a righteous mind are they unprofitable, much less exerting a narrowing tendency on the mind, or cramping the gushing of human feeling; for cold, indeed, must be the heart that can behold strong walls tottering to decay, and fretted vaults, mutilated and dismantled of their pristine beauty; that can behold the proud strongholds of baronial power and feudal tyranny, the victims of the lichen or creeping parasites of the ivy tribe; cold, I say, must be the heart that can see such things, and draw no lesson from them.

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