ANTIQUITIES. In keeping with its derivation, the word "antiquities" had for long a wide and general acceptation, embracing everything belonging to the knowledge of the remoter past. The range of the term has been gradually lessened, and a distinction has grown up between history on the one hand and antiquities on the other, though the line of demarcation is not of the most definite kind. Dr Arnold. made the distinction between the historian and the antiquary to consist in this, that the historian studied the past for the sake of its bearing on the present, while the antiquary was content to investigate it for its own sake alone. It might rather be said, however, that the historian is concerned with the activities of the past, the antiquary with the products - the one with the progress and variation of the creative processes, the other with the perceptible and permanent results. In the vast range of subjects with which both classes of inquirers have to do, - religious rites, social customs, legal forms, architectural remains, sculptures, paintings, and so on, - it is plain that the more decidedly anything takes outward form the more undoubtedly it is the property of the antiquary rather than of the historian; and thence it has happened that the antiquary is not unfrequently thought of as having little concern with any-thing beyond purely material relics.

With respect to its treatment of the past three periods in a nation's history may be roughly distinguished - the period of emotional interest, the period of neglect, and the period of scientific attention. To the last of these the true antiquarian spirit belongs. Of the prevalence of this spirit in the classical ages of Greece and Rome we have but little evidence, though a considerable interest in archaeological • subjects was manifested by the greater historical intellects, such as Thucydides, Polybius, or Livy. But in the Alexandrian school there was a great, though somewhat irregular, development of autiquarianisru, which acquired more of a scientific character from its being rather cosmopolitan than national.

At the revival of learning, when such enthusiasm was felt for everything classical, the relics of Greece and Rome were carefully collected and preserved; but it was some time before a transition took place from classical to national antiquarianism; and hence it is that the earliest literature of archeology is almost solely confined to the classical area. Manutius the younger (1511-1574), Sigonius (1520-1584), Mcursius (1579-1639), Gruter (1560-1627), Gronovius (1645-1716), Graevius (1632-1703), Pitiscus (1637-1727), &c., kept up the line of laborious scholarship which laid the massive foundations of our present archxological erudition. The discoveries at Herculaneum (1713) and Pompeii (1755) gave a great impulse to such studies in general, besides supplying a special field of inquiry for such men as Venuti, Jorio, Bayardi, Rossini, and Ciampitto, Mazois, Gau, Gell, Barre, Fiorelli, Overbeek, Dyer, Monier, Garrucci, &c. The names of Hceren, Muller, Niebuhr, Creuzer, Boeckh, Hartung, and Zumpt are well known to all who are familiar with the subject of classical antiquities; and to these may be added Curtins, Waddington, Braun, Lasaulx, Le Bas, Boulez, Rangabe, Schomany, , Canina, Panofka, Becker, Marquardt, and Lange. The results of their labours have been collected in such books as Pauly's Encyclopiidie der classischenAlterthumswissensch0 ; Smith's Dictionary of Creek and Roman Antiquities; and Daremberg and Saglio's .Dictionnaire des Antiquites grecques et romaines. The capitals of Greece and Italy have naturally attracted particular attention to themselves. On Rome we have the special works of Desgodetz (1682), Piranesi (1781), Overbeek, Rossini, Reber, Dyer, Remnant, Nibby, besides the famous Beschreibung by Bunsen, Platner, Gerhard, itiistell, &c.; on Athens those of Leake, Forchhamm er, Wordsworth, Stuart and Revett,13eule, Laborde, &c. In connection with Etruscan antiquities, Micah, Dempster, Inglirami, Dennis, Hamilton, Heyne, Lanai, and RaoulRochette are well known. The mysteries of the Egyptian monuments have found interpreters in Young, Champollion, Bunsen, Letronne, Lenoir, Lecmans, Sharpe, &c.; while the marvels of Assyria have employed the energies of such men as Botta, Bayard, Rawlinson, Hurter, Grotefend,Rask, Burnouf, Lassen, Westergaard, Hineks, De Saulcy, Holtzmann, Haug, Spiegel. The antiquities of the northern nations of Europe have been treated by Mallet, Thorlacius, Nyerup, Werlauff, Worsaae, Thomsen, Brunius, Grupcn, Heineccius, Rocssig; those of France by Montfaucon, Caylus, Martin, Sauvagere, Ram6, Lajard, Renouvier, Didron, Gailhabaud, Gilbert, Beugnot, Cochet, and a multitude of others. The Russian antiquities have been magnificently represented in a great work issued by order of the Government.

In our own country the names of Leland, Camden, Hearne, Dugdale, Grose, and Roy, are not forgotten in the newer fame of Fosbrooke, Palgrave, Ellis, Wright, Stuart, Wilson, Brand, Lodge, Laing, Bateman, &c. For a knowledge of American antiquities we are largely indebted to Davies, Squier, Lapham, Haven, Rosny, Stephens; and for those of Mexico to Ranking.

In what are called ecclesiastical antiquities, besides the older works of Ugolinus, Canisiva, and Bingham, we may mention Buchon, Bourasse, Martigny, Guenebault. The names of Lubbock and Tylor are especially famous in those inquiries which relate to the general condition of primeval humanity.

Associations of various kinds have naturally been formed by scholars interested in archmological pursuits for the promotion of their favourite studies, and a large number of periodical publications have been established, partly in connection with such associations, and partly as matters of commercial speculation.

As early as 1572, in our own country, a sort of society was formed by Bishop Parker, Sir Robert Cotton, William Camden, and a few kindred spirits, for the preservation of the national antiquities, and it continued to exist till 1604, when it was broken up by James I., who was afraid that it might degenerate into a political association. Papers on subjects discussed by them have been preserved in the Cottonian library, and were printed by Hearne, in 1720, as A Collection of Curious Discourses, and again, in 1771, by Sir Joseph Ayloffe, with considerable additions. In 1707 Humphry Wanley and a number of other gentlemen began to meet together for a similar purpose, and next year they received the co-operation of the brothers Gale, Dr Stukeley, Rymer, &c. In 1717 they were reconstituted, and in 1750 they obtained a charter from George II. as the Society of Antiquaries of London. In 1780 they were presented by George HI. with apartments in Somerset House in the Strand. The council consists of twenty members and a president, who, during his tenure of offices is one of the trustees of the British Museum.

The Society of Antiquaries of Scotland was founded in 1780, and has the management of a large national Antiquarian Museum in Edinburgh. In Ireland there is a Royal Historical and Archwological Association, which holds its meetings at Kilkenny. The Societe des Antiquaires de France was formed, in 1813, by the reconstruction of the Academie Celtique, which had been in existence since 1805 In Germany there are a large number of societies that, under the name of Historische Vereine, embrace the study of antiquarian subjects, and keep up a connection with each other through the Correspondenzblatt des Gesammtvereins der deutschen Ceschichts- mind Alterthumsvereine, published since 1853 at Stuttgart. There is a well-known Societe Royale des Antiquaires du Nord at Copenhagen. Similar associations, far too numerous to mention, have been formed in all countries of European civilisation.

The word antiquaries first appears in the later Roman classics (Tacitus, Suctonius, Juvenal), with the signification of an affecter of old words and phrases. In the Middle Ages it was employed as the designation of one who was skilled in copying ancient manuscripts; and in modern German it has kept, in the form Antiquar, the cognate meaning of a dealer in old books.