The Society of Antiquaries of Scotland was founded in 1780, and has the management of a large national antiquarian museum in Edinburgh. In Ireland a society was founded in 1849 called the Kilkenny Archaeological Society, holding its meetings at Kilkenny. In 1869 its name was changed to the Royal Historical and Archaeological Association of Ireland, and in 1890 to the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, its office being transferred to Dublin. In France _La Société Nationale des Antiquaires de France_ was formed in 1814 by the reconstruction of the _Acadêmie Celtique_, which had existed since 1805. The American Antiquarian Society was founded in 1812, with its headquarters at Worcester, Mass. It has a library of upwards of 100,000 volumes and its transactions have been published bi-annually since 1849. In Germany the _Gesamtverein der Deutschen Geschichtsund Altertumsvereine_ was founded in 1852. _La Société Royale des Antiquaires du Nord_ at Copenhagen is among the best known of European antiquarian societies.
ANTIQUE (Lat. _antiquus_, old), a term conventionally restricted to the remains of ancient art, such as sculptures, gems, medals, seals, &c. In a limited sense it applies only to Greek and Roman art, and includes neither the artistic remains of other ancient nations nor any product of classical art of a later date than the fall of the western empire.
ANTI-SEMITISM. In the political struggles of the concluding quarter of the 19th century an important part was played by a religious, political and social agitation against the Jews, known as "Anti-Semitism." The origins of this remarkable movement already threaten to become obscured by legend. The Jews contend that anti-Semitism is a mere atavistic revival of the Jew-hatred of the middle ages. The extreme section of the anti-Semites, who have given the movement its quasi-scientific name, declare that it is a racial struggle--an incident of the eternal conflict between Europe and Asia--and that the anti-Semites are engaged in an effort to prevent what is called the Aryan race from being subjugated by a Semitic immigration, and to save Aryan ideals from being modified by an alien and demoralizing oriental _Anschauung_. There is no essential foundation for either of these contentions. Religious prejudices reaching back to the dawn of history have been reawakened by the anti-Semitic agitation, but they did not originate it, and they have not entirely controlled it. The alleged racial divergence is, too, only a linguistic hypothesis on the physical evidence of which anthropologists are not agreed (Topinard, _Anthropologie_, p. 444; Taylor, _Origins of Aryans_, cap. i.), and, even if it were proved, it has existed in Europe for so many centuries, and so many ethnic modifications have occurred on both sides, that it cannot be accepted as a practical issue. It is true that the ethnographical histories of the Jews and the nations of Europe have proceeded on widely diverging lines, but these lines have more than once crossed each other and become interlaced. Thus Aryan elements are at the beginning of both; European morals have been ineradicably semitized by Christianity, and the Jews have been Europeans for over a thousand years, during which their character has been modified and in some respects transformed by the ecclesiastical and civil polities of the nations among whom they have made their permanent home. Anti-Semitism is then exclusively a question of European politics, and its origin is to be found, not in the long struggle between Europe and Asia, or between the Church and the Synagogue, which filled so much of ancient and medieval history, but in the social conditions resulting from the emancipation of the Jews in the middle of the 19th century.