Who was to decide between the very diverse opinions, and still more diverse readings, of this inscription by the English antiquary and his Danish rivals? An accidental discovery in an old manuscript may be justly considered as having settled the whole question. For, two or three years after Mr. Kemble had published his reading of the inscription, the identical Anglo-Saxon poem which he had found written on the Ruthwell cross was casually discovered in an extended form under the title of the "Dream of the Rood." The old MS. volume of Saxon homilies and religious lays from which the book containing it was printed, was found by Dr. Blum in a library at Vercelli, in Italy. With these rambling remarks I have already detained you far too long. Ere concluding, however, bear with me for a minute or two longer, while I shortly speak of one clamant subject--viz. the strong necessity of this Society, and of every Scotsman, battling and trying to prevent, if possible, the further demolition of the antiquarian relics scattered over Scotland. Various human agencies have been long busy in the destruction and obliteration of our antiquarian earth and stone works. At no period has this process of demolition gone on in Scotland more rapidly and ruthlessly than during the last fifty or a hundred years. That tide of agricultural improvement which has passed over the country, has, in its utilitarian course, swept away--sometimes inevitably, often most needlessly--the aggers and ditches of ancient camps, sepulchral barrows and mounds, stone circles and cairns, earth-raths, and various other objects of deep antiquarian interest. Indeed, the chief antiquarian remains of this description which have been left on the surface of our soil are to be found on our mountain-tops, on our moors, or in our woods, where the very sterility or inaccessibility of the spot, or the kind protection and sympathy of the old forest-trees, have saved them, for a time at least, from reckless ruin and annihilation. Some of the antiquarian memorials that I allude to would have endured for centuries to come, had it not been for human interference and devastation. For, in the demolition of these works of archaic man, the hand of man has too generally proved both a busier and a less scrupulous agent than the hand of time.