s still so much in its infancy, that
it is only now beginning to guess its powers, and feel its deficiencies.
It has still no end of lessons to learn, and perhaps some to unlearn,
before it can manage to extract the true metal of knowledge from the ore
and dross of exaggeration in which many of its inquiries have become
enveloped. At this present hour we virtually know far less of the
Archaeology and history of Scotland ten or fifteen centuries ago than we
know of the Archaeology and history of Etruria, Egypt, or Assyria,
twenty-five or thirty centuries ago.

In order to obtain the light which is required to clear away the dark
and heavy mists which thus obscure the early Archaeology of Scotland, how
should we proceed? In the pursuits and investigations of Archaeology, as
of other departments of science, there has never yet been, and never
will be discovered, any direct railway or royal road to the knowledge
which we are anxious to gain, but which we are inevitably doomed to wait
for and to work for. The different branches of science are Gordian
knots, the threads of which we can only hope to unwind and evolve by
cautious assiduity, and slow, patient industry. Their secrets cannot be
summarily cut open and exposed by the sword of any son of Philip. But,
in our daydreams, it is not unpleasant sometimes to imagine the
possibility of such a feat. It was, as we all know, very generally
believed, in distant antiquarian times, that occasionally dead men could
be induced to rise, and impart all sorts of otherwise unattainable
information to the living. This creed, however, has not been limited to
those ancient times, for, in our own days, many sane persons still
profess to believe in the possibility of summoning the spirits of the
departed from the other world back to this sublunary sphere. When they
do so, they have always hitherto, as far as I have heard, encouraged
these spirits to perform such silly juggling tricks, or requested them
to answer such trivial and frivolous questions, as would seem to my
humble apprehension to be almost insulting to the grim dignity and
solemn character of any respectable and intelligent ghost. If, like Owen
Glendower, or Mr. Home, I had the power to "call spirits from the vasty
deep," and if the spirits answered the call, I--being a practical
man--would fain make a practical use of their presence. Methinks I
should feel grossly tempted, for example, to ask such of them as had the
necessary fo