590 THE METHODS OF ARCH^OLOGICAL RESEARCH. 



into a mosaic, in which we may see how our fathers lived, as well as 

 what their aims and ideals were; how far they had progressed in mak- 

 ing life tolerable and decorating it with sunshine, as well as unriddling 

 the meaning of the terribly tragic chapters in which we read how 

 mighty empires, in which greatness and glory were combined, and in 

 which prosperity seemed anchored as firmly as one of the brave oaks 

 of your own country, were leveled to the ground, their ])eople slaugh- 

 tered and destroyed, their palaces and temples reduced to dust, and 

 their fertile fields once more occupied by the pelican and the jackal. 

 It was once the custom to despise some of these lessons. The antiquary 

 was a connoisseur, whose studies were dominated by taste and not by 

 knowledge. To admire, to study, and to review the masteri^ieces of 

 Greek art; to do the same with the masterpieces of the Italian renais- 

 gjince — these were his aims, Phidias and Michael Angelo his ideals. It 

 was only when the tide was flowing highest that it was deemed profit- 

 able to study it. Hence why the collection and the museums gathered 

 in former centuries are so wanting in historic value. They represent 

 the phases of taste as applied to the acts of other days, and the various 

 measures and standards which this change of taste has created, some- 

 times inspired by nature alone, and sometimes by nature bewigged and 

 bepowdered. We have advanced from this position. We have learned 

 that the ebb as well as the flow of the tide is of supreme interest to us, 

 perhaps of even more interest. Hence, while we admiie and rejoice in 

 some masterpiece like the Hermes of Praxiteles, we are constrained to 

 devote a corresi)onding study to the rude bas-reliefs from the temples 

 of Copau, and the ruder and more homely products of the old stone men. 

 We can scarcely realize that hardly a generation has gone by when, 

 at the British Museum, it was the fashion to admit only classical antiq- 

 uities as worthy of collection, and that the priceless treasures dug up 

 by Faussett and Rolfe were treated as rubbish, unworthy of a place 

 in that sanctuary of the arts, and had to seek a home in a provincial 

 museum. Fifty years ago a man who had devoted his time, his jmrse, 

 and his knowledge to creating a worthy department of British antiqui- 

 ties would not have been rewarded with the Order of the Bath, but 

 would have been treated by the students of so-called high art as a bar- 

 barian and a phillistiue, tit only to consort with people like you and 

 me. We have changed all this, but its mischievous results still remain. 

 If we go to the British Museum we shall find the noblest collection of 

 Greek art in the world. Taken altogether it is quite unapproachable, 

 thanks to the labor, the zeal, and the taste of many good men, and nota- 

 bly of the late and the present curators of that department. But when 

 we turn to Rome — Rome, the mother of modern Europe; Rome, the 

 Britain of old days, the great type of practical good sense in govern- 

 ment; the Rome whose roads and bridges, whose colonies and towns, 

 whose laws and municipal institutions are only rivaled by our own, and 

 which ruled the world for a thousand years and more— where are we to 



