194 Atlmitis. 



regarded as false. Wendell PliillijDs, in his interesting lecture on the 

 "Lost Arts," illustrates this point by an anecdote of Archimedes, of 

 whom it is said that when the ships of the enemy besieging Syracuse 

 drew away from the levers he had arranged to pry them out of water, 

 he turned upon them the sun's rays focalized by concave mirrors, and 

 thus set fire to them. This story, so long discredited on account of its 

 alleged physical impossibility, he shows to be true, so far, at least, as 

 this objection to its truth is concerned, by an experiment of certain 

 French scientists who succeeded in fusing lead at the distance of three 

 hundred feet by the same means. 



Again, the long disputed existence of Troy, outside of the glowing 

 periods of Homer, seems to be now satisfactorily demonstrated by the 

 researches of Dr. Schliemann, which have not only laid bare the 

 foundations of Ilium's once lofty towers, but show that they were 

 themselves reared upon the debris of a civilization old when Troy was 

 born — a civilization unknown to history and lost even to tradition. 



Recent discoveries, also demonstrate the truth of the tradi- 

 tional history of Rome current among the educated classes of the 

 capital during the Augustan age. Explorations conducted at the 

 expense of the late Emperor of the French, and of the Russian govern- 

 ment, during the last twenty years, show that even in the time of the 

 Kings, Rome was a fortified city of great importance and immense 

 population. The wall of Romulus, so long considered a myth like the 

 suckling wolf, is disclosed to view, corresponding in detail with the 

 description given by Dionysius of Halicarnassus — the stones composing 

 it being each a " cart load," and so described in the technique of the 

 Roman masons to-day. 



But in Egypt the most interesting results of modern archaeological 

 investigation have been achieved, and these relate more nearly to the 

 subject of our present discussion. On the banks of the mysterious Nile, 

 the patient labors of Auguste Mariette, formerly a Lieutenant of 

 French Engineers, have been crowned with a success which sets at 

 rest many heretofore doubtful points, and, besides, opens to us new 

 lines of historical and ethnological inquiry. 



" Unwearied digging," says Bayard Taylor, " has enabled Mariette to 

 reach the records of the ancient empire, and to show — what we never 

 before suspected — that the glory of Egyptian art belongs to the age 

 of Rameses II. (SesostrLs). Not only the art, but the culture, the 

 political organization of Egypt, are carried back to the third dynasty, 

 (4,450 B. C.) and Menes, the first historic king, dawns upon our 

 knowledge, not as a primitive barbarian, but as the result of a long 

 stage of unrecorded development. I do not hesitate to say, that since 



