reknowledge, to rap out for me, in the first instance, the
exact state of the English funds, or of the London stock and share-list,
a week or a month hence; for such early information would, I opine--if
the spirits were true spirits--be rather an expeditious and easy mode of
filling my coffers, or the coffers of any man who had the good sense of
plying these spiritual intelligences with one or two simple and useful
questions. If, however, the spirits refused to answer such golden
interrogatories as involving matters too mercenary and not sufficiently
ghostly in their character, then I certainly should next ask them--and I
would of course select very ancient spirits for the purpose--hosts of
questions regarding the state of society, religion, the arts, etc., at
the time when they themselves were living denizens of this earth.
Suppose, for a moment, that our Secretaries, on summoning the next
meeting of this Society, had the power of announcing in their billets
that, by "some feat of magic mystery," a very select and intelligent
deputation of ancient Britons and Caledonians, Picts, Celts, and Scots,
and perhaps of Scottish Turanians, were to be present in our
Museum--(certainly the most appropriate room in the kingdom for such a
reunion)--for a short sederunt, somewhere between twilight and
cock-crowing, to answer any questions which the Fellows might choose to
ply them with, what an excitement would such an announcement create! How
eagerly would some of our Fellows look forward to the results of one or
two such "Hours with the Mystics." And what a battery of quick questions
would be levelled at the members of this deputation on all the endless
problems involved in Scottish Archaeology. I think we may readily, and
yet pretty certainly, conjecture a few of the questions, on our earlier
antiquities alone, that would be put by various members that I might
name, as:--

What is the signification of the so-called "crescent" and "spectacle"
ornaments, and of the other unique symbols that are so common upon the
150 and odd ancient Sculptured Stones scattered over the north-eastern
districts of Scotland?

What is the true reading of the old enigmatic inscriptions upon the
Newton and St. Vigean's stones, and of the Oghams on the stones of
Logie, Bressay, Golspie, etc.?

Had Solinus Polyhistor, in the fourth century, any ground for stating
that an ancient Ulyssean altar, written with Greek letters, existed in
the recesses of Cale