THE GREEK MIND IN PRESENCE OF DEATH. 



265 



Kingswood should ever be reformed, or that the 

 women of India should ever be moulded by Eu- 

 ropean influences. Yet this also was accomplished 

 in our own day by the faith and energy of a wise 

 and gentle woman, dear to Bristol — Mary Carpen- 

 ter. It might have been thought impossible that 

 an institution like this should ever have sprung 

 into existence, that Oxford should ever have 

 come to Bristol — that three hundred Bristol stu- 

 dents should have been listening to lecturers 

 from Oxford, Cambridge, and Dublin. Yet it has 

 been done. AU these discoverers have ascended 

 Mount Ararat ; and, though the most incredulous 

 Archimandrite may shake his head and sweetly 

 smile, and say that it cannot be, yet these things, 

 great and small, have been achieved — and achieved j 

 in safety. 



This is one of the best fruits of the education 

 of after-life. It encourages the hope that impos- 

 sibilities may become not only possibilities but 

 actualities- There is a great company here of 

 the " Merchant Venturers," called so, I am told, 

 because they made some of those mighty vent- 

 ures in former times by which new lands were 

 found — new wealth and knowledge poured into 

 this ancient city. But there are still many voy- 

 ages to be made, still much wealth to be ex- 

 pended, still new Ararats to be scaled. We are 



all of us Merchant Venturers — we all of us must 

 venture something, if we would leave something 

 worth living for — nay, if we would have something 

 to look forward to hereafter. Nil desperandum 

 must be written, as in the porch of the Redcliffe 

 Church, so over the entrance of every stage of 

 our existence. 



Yes, over every stage. For this is the last 

 word I will venture to say concerning the educa- 

 tion of life. In the transformation of opinion 

 which is imperceptibly affecting all our concep- 

 tions of the future state, and in the perplexities 

 and doubts which this transformation excites, the 

 idea that comes with the most solid force and 

 abiding comfort to the foreground is the belief 

 that the whole of our human existence is an edu- 

 cation — not merely, as Bishop Butler said, a pro- 

 bation for the future, but an education which 

 shall reach into the future. The possibilities that 

 overcome the impossibilities in our actual expe- 

 rience show us that there may yet be greater 

 possibilities which shall overcome the yet more 

 formidable impossibilities lying beyond our expe- 

 rience, beyond our sight, beyond the last great 

 change of all. Through all these changes, and 

 toward that unseen goal, in the words of Mr. 

 Burke, " let us pass on — -for God's sake, let us 

 pass on I " — Maemillan's Magazine. 



THE GREEK MIND IN PRESENCE OF DEATH, 



INTERPRETED FROM RELIEFS AND INSCRIPTIONS ON A TJIENIAN TOMBS. 



By PERCY GARDNER . 



AT Athens the gravestones of the ancient 

 inhabitants are not only among the most 

 Interesting, but among the most extensive, re- 

 mains. Near Piraeus, through all the Ceramicus, 

 and in many other parts of the city, excavations 

 have constantly brought to light a vast quantity 

 of inscribed and sculptured slabs and columns, 

 which have mostly, unlike antiquities of many 

 other classes, remained at Athens, and now fill 

 one wing of the new museum and the whole space 

 in front. But there is a group of gravestones of 

 even greater interest which are left standing, just 

 where they were disinterred, by the old road 

 which led through the gate Dipylon, from Athens 

 to Eleusis, the road annually trodden by the pro- 

 cession at the Eleusinia. These tombs, in size 

 and beauty superior to the rest, are preserved for 



us, as is supposed, by a fortunate chance. 1 Sulla, 

 when he attacked Athens and remorselessly mas- 

 sacred the miserable inhabitants, made his ap- 

 proach close to the gate Dipylon. There he 

 erected the long aggeres by which his engines 

 were brought close to the wall, and there his sol- 

 diers threw down several hundred yards of the 

 city ramparts, which were formed of sun-baked 

 bricks. Hence a vast mass of ruin which com- 

 pletely overwhelmed and buried the lines of 

 tombs immediately without the gate, and pre- 

 served them almost uninjured until one day when 

 they were once more brought to the light by a 

 French archaeological expedition in the year 1863. 

 The suddenness with which these monuments 

 were overwhelmed is indicated by the fact that 

 1 See F. Lenormanfs " Voie Eleusinienne," vol. i. 



