There is one thing, however, which has been overlooked.  This scientific journal does not contain the ultimate results of the archaeologist’s researches.  It contains the researches themselves.  The public, so to speak, has been listening to the pianist playing his morning scales, has been watching the artist mixing his colours, has been examining the unshaped block of marble and the chisels in the sculptor’s studio.  It must be confessed, of course, that the archaeologist has so enjoyed his researches that often the ultimate result has been overlooked by him.  In the case of Egyptian archaeology, for example, there are only two Egyptologists who have ever set themselves to write a readable history,[1] whereas the number of books which record the facts of the science is legion.

    [Footnote 1:  Professor J.H.  Breasted and Sir Gaston Maspero.]

The archaeologist not infrequently lives, for a large part of his time, in a museum, a somewhat dismal place.  He is surrounded by rotting tapestries, decaying bones, crumbling stones, and rusted or corroded objects.  His indoor work has paled his cheek, and his muscles are not like iron bands.  He stands, often, in the contiguity to an ancient broadsword most fitted to demonstrate the fact that he could never use it.  He would probably be dismissed his curatorship were he to tell of any dreams which might run in his head—­dreams of the time when those tapestries hung upon the walls of barons’ banquet-halls, or when those stones rose high above the streets of Camelot.

Moreover, those who make researches independently must needs contribute their results to scientific journals, written in the jargon of the learned.  I came across a now forgotten journal, a short time ago, in which an English gentleman, believing that he had made a discovery in the province of Egyptian hieroglyphs, announced it in ancient Greek.  There would be no supply of such pedantic swagger were there not a demand for it.

Small wonder, then, that the archaeologist is often represented as partaking somewhat of the quality of the dust amidst which he works.  It is not necessary here to discuss whether this estimate is just or not:  I wish only to point out its paradoxical nature.

More than any other science, archaeology might be expected to supply its exponents with stuff that, like old wine, would fire the blood and stimulate the senses.  The stirring events of the Past must often be reconstructed by the archaeologist with such precision that his prejudices are aroused, and his sympathies are so enlisted as to set him fighting with a will under this banner or under that.  The noise of the hardy strife of young nations is not yet silenced for him, nor have the flags and the pennants faded from sight.  He has knowledge of the state secrets of kings, and, all along the line, is an intimate spectator of the crowded pageant of history.  The caravan-masters of the elder days, the admirals