THE NECESSITY OF ARCHÆOLOGY TO THE GAIETY OF THE WORLD
When a great man puts a period to his existence upon earth by dying, he
is carefully buried in a tomb and a monument is set up to his glory in
the neighbouring church. He may then be said to begin his second life,
his life in the memory of the chronicler and historian. After the lapse
of an æon or two the works of the historian, and perhaps the tomb
itself, are rediscovered; and the great man begins his third life, now
as a subject of discussion and controversy amongst archæologists in the
pages of a scientific journal. It may be supposed that the spirit of the
great man, not a little pleased with his second life, has an extreme
distaste for his third. There is a dead atmosphere about it which sets
him yawning as only his grave yawned before. The charm has been taken
from his deeds; there is no longer any spring in them. He must feel
towards the archæologist much as a young man feels towards his
cold-blooded parent by whom his love affair has just been found out. The
public, too, if by chance it comes upon this archæological journal,
finds the discussion nothing more than a mental gymnastic, which, as the
reader drops off to sleep, gives him the impression that the writer is a
man of profound brain capacity, but, like the remains of the great man
of olden times, as dry as dust.
There is one thing, however, which has been overlooked. This scientific
journal does not contain the ultimate results of the archæologist’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 archæologist has so enjoyed his
researches that often the ultimate result has been overlooked by him. In
the case of Egyptian archæology, for example, there are only two or
three Egyptologists who have ever set themselves to write a readable
history, whereas the number of books which record the facts of the
science is legion.
The archæologist not infrequently lives, for a large part of his time,
in a museum. However clean it may be, he is surrounded by rotting
tapestries, decaying bones, crumbling stones, and rusted or corroded
metal 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 archæologist 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
only wish to point out its paradoxical nature.
More than any other science, archæology 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 archæologist 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 past, the
admirals of the “great green sea,” the captains of archers, have related
their adventures to him; and he might repeat to you their stories.
Indeed, he has such a tale to tell that, looking at it in this light,
one might expect his listeners all to be good sturdy men and noble
women. It might be supposed that the archæologist would gather round him
only men who have pleasure in the road that leads over the hills, and
women who have known the delight of the open. One has heard so often of
the “brave days of old” that the archæologist might well be expected to
have his head stuffed with brave tales and little else.
His range, however, may be wider than this. To him, perhaps, it has been
given to listen to the voice of the ancient poet, heard as a far-off
whisper; to breathe in forgotten gardens the perfume of long dead
flowers; to contemplate the love of women whose beauty is perished in
the dust; to hearken to the sound of the harp and the sistra; to be the
possessor of the riches of historical romance. Dim armies have battled
around him for the love of Helen; shadowy captains of sea-going ships
have sung to him through the storm the song of the sweethearts left
behind them; he has feasted with sultans, and kings’ goblets have been
held to his lips; he has watched Uriah the Hittite sent to the forefront
of the battle.
Thus, were he to offer a story, one might now suppose that there would
gather around him, not the men of muscle, but a throng of sallow
listeners, as improperly expectant as were those who hearkened under the
moon to the narrations of Boccaccio, or, in old Baghdad, gave ear to the
tales of the thousand and one nights. One might suppose that his
audience would be drawn from those classes most fondly addicted to
pleasure, or most nearly representative, in their land and in their
time, of the light-hearted and not unwanton races of whom he had to
tell.
Who could better arrest the attention of the coxcomb than the
archæologist who has knowledge of silks and scents now lost to the
living world? To the gourmet who could more appeal than the
archæologist who has made abundant acquaintance with the forgotten
dishes of the East? Who could more surely thrill the senses of the
courtesan than the archæologist who can relate that which was whispered
by Antony in the ear of Cleopatra? To the gambler who could be more
enticing than the archæologist who has seen kings play at dice for their
kingdoms? The imaginative, truly, might well collect the most highly
disreputable audience to listen to the tales of the archæologist.
But no, these are not the people who are anxious to catch the pearls
which drop from his mouth. Do statesmen and diplomatists, then, listen
to him who can unravel for them the policies of the Past? Do business
men hasten from Threadneedle Street and Wall Street to sit at his feet,
that they may have instilled into them a little of the romance of
ancient money? I fear not.
Come with me to some provincial town, where this day Professor Blank is
to deliver one of his archæological lectures at the Town Hall. We are
met at the door by the secretary of the local archæological society: a
melancholy lady in green plush, who suffers from St. Vitus’s dance.
Gloomily we enter the hall and silently accept the seats which are
indicated to us by an unfortunate gentleman with a club-foot. In front
of us an elderly female with short hair is chatting to a very plain
young woman draped like a lay figure. On the right an emaciated man with
a very bad cough shuffles on his chair; on the left two old grey-beards
grumble to one another about the weather, a subject which leads up to
the familiar “Mine catches me in the small of the back”; while behind us
the inevitable curate, of whose appearance it would be trite to speak,
describes to an astonished old lady the recent discovery of the pelvis
of a mastodon.
The professor and the aged chairman step on to the platform; and, amidst
the profoundest gloom, the latter rises to pronounce the prefatory
rigmarole. “Archæology,” he says, in a voice of brass, “is a science
which bars its doors to all but the most erudite; for, to the layman who
has not been vouchsafed the opportunity of studying the dusty volumes of
the learned, the bones of the dead will not reveal their secrets, nor
will the crumbling pediments of naos and cenotaph, the obliterated
tombstones, or the worm-eaten parchments, tell us their story. To-night,
however, we are privileged! for Professor Blank will open the doors for
us that we may gaze for a moment upon that solemn charnel-house of the
Past in which he has sat for so many long hours of inductive
meditation.”
And the professor by his side, whose head, perhaps, was filled with the
martial music of the long-lost hosts of the Lord, or before whose eyes
there swayed the entrancing forms of the dancing-girls of Babylon,
stares horrified from chairman to audience. He sees crabbed old men and
barren old women before him, afflicted youths and fatuous maidens; and
he realises at once that the golden keys which he possesses to the gates
of the treasury of the jewelled Past will not open the doors of that
charnel-house which they desire to be shown. The scent of the king’s
roses fades from his nostrils, the Egyptian music which throbbed in his
ears is hushed, the glorious illumination of the Palace of a Thousand
Columns is extinguished; and in the gathering gloom we leave him
fumbling with a rusty key at the mildewed door of the Place of Bones.
Why is it, one asks, that archæology is a thing so misunderstood? Can it
be that both lecturer and audience have crushed down that which was in
reality uppermost in their minds: that a shy search for romance has led
these people to the Town Hall? Or perchance archæology has become to
them something not unlike a vice, and to listen to an archæological
lecture is their remaining chance of being naughty. It may be that,
having one foot in the grave, they take pleasure in kicking the moss
from the surrounding tombstones with the other; or that, being denied,
for one reason or another, the jovial society of the living, like Robert
Southey’s “Scholar” their hopes are with the dead.
Be the explanation what it may, the fact is indisputable that archæology
is patronised by those who know not its real meaning. A man has no more
right to think of the people of old as dust and dead bones than he has
to think of his contemporaries as lumps of meat. The true archæologist
does not take pleasure in skeletons as skeletons, for his whole effort
is to cover them decently with flesh and skin once more and to put some
thoughts back into the empty skulls. Nor does he delight in ruined
buildings: rather he deplores that they are ruined. Coleridge wrote like
the true archaeologist when he composed that most magical poem “Khubla
Khan”----
“In Xanadu did Khubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.”
And those who would have the pleasure-domes of the gorgeous Past
reconstructed for them must turn to the archæologist; those who would
see the damsel with the dulcimer in the gardens of Xanadu must ask of
him the secret, and of none other. It is true that, before he can
refashion the dome or the damsel, he will have to grub his way through
old refuse heaps till he shall lay bare the ruins of the walls and
expose the bones of the lady. But this is the “dirty work”; and the
mistake which is made lies here: that this preliminary dirty work is
confused with the final clean result. An artist will sometimes build up
his picture of Venus from a skeleton bought from an old Jew round the
corner; and the smooth white paper which he uses will have been made
from putrid rags and bones. Amongst painters themselves these facts are
not hidden, but by the public they are most carefully obscured. In the
case of archæology, however, the tedious details of construction are so
placed in the foreground that the final picture is hardly noticed at
all. As well might one go to an aerodrome to see men fly, and be shown
nothing else but screws and nuts, steel rods and woodwork. Originally
the fault, perhaps, lay with the archæologist; now it lies both with him
and with the public. The public has learnt to ask to be shown the works,
and the archæologist is often so proud of them that he forgets to
mention the purpose of the machine.
A Roman statue of bronze, let us suppose, is discovered in the Thames
valley. It is so corroded and eaten away that only an expert could
recognise that it represents a reclining goddess. In this condition it
is placed in the museum, and a photograph of it is published in the
daily paper. Those who come to look at it in its glass case think it is
a bunch of grapes, or possibly a monkey; those who see its photograph
say that it is more probably an irregular catapult-stone or a fish in
convulsions.
The archæologist alone holds its secret, and only he can see it as it
was. He alone can know the mind of the artist who made it, or interpret
the full meaning of the conception. It might have been expected, then,
that the public would demand, and the archæologist delightedly furnish,
a model of the figure as near to the original as possible; or, failing
that, a restoration in drawing, or even a worded description of its
original beauty. But no: the public, if it wants anything, wants to see
the shapeless object in all its corrosion; and the archæologist forgets
that it is blind to aught else but that corrosion. One of the main
duties of the archæologist is thus lost sight of: his duty as
Interpreter and Remembrancer of the Past.
All the riches of olden times, all the majesty, all the power, are the
inheritance of the present day; and the archæologist is the recorder of
this fortune. He must deal in dead bones only so far as the keeper of a
financial fortune must deal in dry documents. Behind those documents
glitters the gold, and behind those bones shines the wonder of the
things that were. And when an object once beautiful has by age become
unsightly one might suppose that he would wish to show it to none save
his colleagues or the reasonably curious layman. When a man makes a
statement that his grandmother, now in her ninety-ninth year, was once a
beautiful woman, he does not go and find her to prove his words and
bring her tottering into the room: he shows a picture of her as she was;
or, if he cannot find one, he describes what good evidence tells him
was her probable appearance. In allowing his controlled and sober
imagination thus to perform its natural functions, though it would never
do to tell his grandmother so, he becomes an archæologist, a
Remembrancer of the Past.
In the case of archæology, however, the public does not permit itself to
be convinced. In the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford excellent facsimile
electrotypes of early Greek weapons are exhibited; and these have far
more value in bringing the Past before us than the actual weapons of
that period, corroded and broken, would have. But the visitor says
“These are shams,” and passes on.
It will be seen, then, that the business of archæology is often
misunderstood both by archæologists and by the public; and that there is
really no reason to believe, with Thomas Earle, that the real
antiquarian loves a thing the better for that it is rotten and stinketh.
That the impression has gone about is his own fault, for he has exposed
too much to view the mechanism of his work; but it is also the fault of
the public for not asking of him a picture of things as they were.
Man is by nature a creature of the present. It is only by an effort that
he can consider the future, and it is often quite impossible for him to
give any heed at all to the past. The days of old are so blurred and
remote that it seems right to him that any relic from them should, by
the maltreatment of Time, be unrecognisable. The finding of an old
sword, half-eaten by rust, will only please him in so far as it shows
him once more by its sad condition the great gap between those days and
these, and convinces him again of the sole importance of the present.
The archæologist, he will tell you, is a fool if he expects him to be
interested in a wretched old bit of scrapiron. He is right. It would be
as rash to suppose that he would find interest in an ancient sword in
its rusted condition as it would be to expect the spectator at the
aerodrome to find fascination in the nuts and screws. The true
archæologist would hide that corroded weapon in his work-shop, where his
fellow-workers alone could see it. For he recognises that it is only the
sword which is as good as new that impresses the public; it is only the
Present that counts. That is the real reason why he is an archæologist.
He has turned to the Past because he is in love with the Present. He,
more than any man, worships at the altar of the goddess of To-day; and
he is so desirous of extending her dominion that he has adventured, like
a crusader, into the lands of the Past, in order to subject them to her.
Adoring the Now, he would resent the publicity of anything which so
obviously suggested the Then as a rust-eaten old blade. His whole
business is to hide the gap between Yesterday and To-day; and, unless a
man be initiate, he would have him either see the perfect sword as it
was when it sought the foeman’s bowels, or see nothing. The Present is
too small for him; and it is therefore that he calls so insistently to
the Past to come forth from the darkness to augment it. The ordinary man
lives in the Present, and he will tell one that the archæologist lives
in the Past. This is not so. The layman, in the manner of the little
Nationalist, lives in a small and confined Present; but the
archæologist, like a true Imperialist, ranges through all time, and
calls it not the Past but the Greater Present.
The archæologist is not, or ought not to be, lacking in vivacity. One
might say that he is so sensible to the charms of society that, finding
his companions too few in number, he has drawn the olden times to him to
search them for jovial men and agreeable women. It might be added that
he has so laughed at jest and joke that, fearing lest the funds of
humour run dry, he has gathered the laughter of all the years to his
enrichment. Certainly he has so delighted in noble adventure and
stirring action that he finds his newspaper insufficient to his needs,
and fetches to his aid the tales of old heroes. In fact, the
archæologist is so enamoured of life that he would raise all the dead
from their graves. He will not have it that the men of old are dust: he
would bring them forth to share with him the sunlight which he finds so
precious. He is so much an enemy of Death and Decay that he would rob
them of their harvest; and, for every life that the foe has claimed, he
would raise up, if he could, a memory that would continue to live.
The meaning of the heading which has been given to this chapter is now
becoming clear, and the direction of the argument is already apparent.
So far it has been my purpose to show that the archæologist is not a
rag-and-bone man, though the public generally thinks he is, and he often
thinks he is himself. The attempt has been made to suggest that
archæology ought not to consist in sitting in a charnel-house amongst
the dead, but rather in ignoring that place and taking the bones into
the light of day, decently clad in flesh and finery. It has now to be
shown in what manner this parading of the Past is needful to the gaiety
of the Present.
Amongst cultured people whose social position makes it difficult for
them to dance in circles on the grass in order to express or to
stimulate their gaiety, and whose school of deportment will not permit
them to sing a merry song of sixpence as they trip down the streets,
there is some danger of the fire of merriment dying for want of fuel.
Vivacity in printed books, therefore, has been encouraged, so that the
mind at least, if not the body, may skip about and clap its hands. A
portly gentleman with a solemn face, reading his “Punch” or his “Life”
in the club, is, after all, giving play to precisely those same humours
which in ancient days might have led him, like Georgy Porgy, to kiss the
girls or to perform any other merry joke. It is necessary, therefore,
ever to enlarge the stock of things humorous, vivacious, or rousing, if
the thoughts are to be kept young and eyes bright in this age of
restraint. What would Yuletide be without the olden times to bolster it
up? What would the Christmas numbers do without the pictures of our
great-grand-parents’ coaches snowbound, of huntsmen of the eighteenth
century, of jesters at the courts of the barons? What should we do
without the “Vicar of Wakefield,” the “Compleat Angler,” “Pepys’ Diary,”
and all the rest of the ancient books? And, going back a few centuries,
what an amount we should miss had we not “Æsop’s Fables,” the “Odyssey,”
the tales of the Trojan War, and so on. It is from the archæologist that
one must expect the augmentation of this supply; and just in that degree
in which the existing supply is really a necessary part of our
equipment, so archæology, which looks for more, is necessary to our
gaiety.
In order to keep his intellect undulled by the routine of his dreary
work, Matthew Arnold was wont to write a few lines of poetry each day.
Poetry, like music and song, is an effective dispeller of care; and
those who find Omar Khayyam or “In Memoriam” incapable of removing the
burden of their woes, will no doubt appreciate the “Owl and the
Pussy-cat,” or the Bab Ballads. In some form or other verse and song are
closely linked with happiness; and a ditty from any age has its interest
and its charm.
“She gazes at the stars above:
I would I were the skies,
That I might gaze upon my love
With such a thousand eyes!”
That is from the Greek of a writer who is not much read by the public at
large, and whose works are the legitimate property of the antiquarian.
It suffices to show that it is not only to the moderns that we have to
look for dainty verse that is conducive to a light heart. The following
lines are from the ancient Egyptian:--
“While in my room I lie all day
In pain that will not pass away,
The neighbours come and go.
Ah, if with them my darling came
The doctors would be put to shame:
_She_ understands my woe.”
Such examples might be multiplied indefinitely; and the reader will
admit that there is as much of a lilt about those which are here quoted
as there is about the majority of the ditties which he has hummed to
himself in his hour of contentment. Here is Philodemus’ description of
his mistress’s charms:--
“My lady-love is small and brown;
My lady’s skin is soft as down;
Her hair like parsley twists and turns;
Her voice with magic passion burns....”
And here is an ancient Egyptian’s description of not very dissimilar
phenomena:--
“A damsel sweet unto the sight,
A maid of whom no like there is;
Black are her tresses as the night,
And blacker than the blackberries.”
Does not the archæologist perform a service to his contemporaries by
searching out such rhymes and delving for more? They bring with them,
moreover, so subtle a suggestion of bygone romance, they are backed by
so fair a scene of Athenian luxury or Theban splendour, that they
possess a charm not often felt in modern verse. If it is argued that
there is no need to increase the present supply of such ditties, since
they are really quite unessential to our gaiety, the answer may be given
that no nation and no period has ever found them unessential; and a
light heart has been expressed in this manner since man came down from
the trees.
Let us turn now to another consideration. For a man to be light of heart
he must have confidence in humanity. He cannot greet the morn with a
smiling countenance if he believe that he and his fellows are slipping
down the broad path which leads to destruction. The archæologist never
despairs of mankind; for he has seen nations rise and fall till he is
almost giddy, but he knows that there has never been a general
deterioration. He realises that though a great nation may suffer defeat
and annihilation, it is possible for it to go down in such a thunder
that the talk of it stimulates other nations for all time. He sees, if
any man can, that all things work together for happiness. He has
observed the cycle of events, the good years and the bad; and in an
evil time he is comforted by the knowledge that the good will presently
roll round again. Thus the lesson which he can teach is a very real
necessity to that contentment of mind which lies at the root of all
gaiety.
Again, a man cannot be permanently happy unless he has a just sense of
proportion. He who is too big for his boots must needs limp; and he who
has a swollen head is in perpetual discomfort. The history of the lives
of men, the history of the nations, gives one a fairer sense of
proportion than does almost any other study. In the great company of the
men of old he cannot fail to assess his true value: if he has any
conceit there is a greater than he to snub him; if he has a poor opinion
of his powers there is many a fool with whom to contrast himself
favourably. If he would risk his fortune on the spinning of a coin,
being aware of the prevalence of his good-luck, archæology will tell him
that the best luck will change; or if, when in sore straits, he ask
whether ever a man was so unlucky, archæology will answer him that many
millions of men have been more unfavoured than he. Archæology provides a
precedent for almost every event or occurrence where modern inventions
are not involved; and, in this manner, one may reckon their value and
determine their trend. Thus many of the small worries which cause so
leaden a weight to lie upon the heart and mind are by the archæologist
ignored; and many of the larger calamities by him are met with serenity.
But not only does the archæologist learn to estimate himself and his
actions; he learns also to see the relationship in which his life stands
to the course of Time. Without archæology a man may be disturbed lest
the world be about to come to an end: after a study of history he knows
that it has only just begun; and that gaiety which is said to have
obtained “when the world was young” is to him, therefore, a present
condition. By studying the ages the archæologist learns to reckon in
units of a thousand years; and it is only then that that little unit of
threescore-and-ten falls into its proper proportion. “A thousand ages in
Thy sight are like an evening gone,” says the hymn, but it is only the
archæologist who knows the meaning of the words; and it is only he who
can explain that great discrepancy in the Christian faith between the
statement “Behold, I come quickly” and the actual fact. A man who knows
where he is in regard to his fellows, and realises where he stands in
regard to Time, has learnt a lesson of archæology which is as necessary
to his peace of mind as his peace of mind is necessary to his gaiety.
It is not needful, however, to continue to point out the many ways in
which archæology may be shown to be necessary to happiness. The reader
will have comprehended the trend of the argument, and, if he be in
sympathy with it, he will not be unwilling to develop the theme for
himself. Only one point, therefore, need here be taken up. It has been
reserved to the end of this chapter, for, by its nature, it closes all
arguments. I refer to Death.
Death, as we watch it around us, is the black menace of the heavens
which darkens every man’s day; Death, coming to our neighbour, puts a
period to our merrymaking; Death, seen close beside us, calls a halt in
our march of pleasure. But let those who would wrest her victory from
the grave turn to a study of the Past, where all is dead yet still
lives, and they will find that the horror of life’s cessation is
materially lessened. To those who are familiar with the course of
history, Death seems, to some extent, but the happy solution of the
dilemma of life. So many men have welcomed its coming that one begins to
feel that it cannot be so very terrible. Of the death of a certain
Pharaoh an ancient Egyptian wrote: “He goes to heaven like the hawks,
and his feathers are like those of the geese; he rushes at heaven like a
crane, he kisses heaven like the falcon, he leaps to heaven like the
locust”; and we who read his words can feel that to rush eagerly at
heaven like the crane would be a very fine ending of the story.
Archæology, and especially Egyptology, in this respect is a bulwark to
those who find the faith of their fathers wavering; for, after much
study, the triumphant assertion which is so often found in Egyptian
tombs--“Thou dost not come dead to thy sepulchre, thou comest
living”--begins to take hold of the imagination. Death has been the
parent of so much goodness, dying men have cut such a dash, that one
looks at it with an awakening interest. Even if the sense of the
misfortune of death is uppermost in an archæologist’s mind, he may find
not a little comfort in having before him the example of so many good
men, who, in their hour, have faced that great calamity with squared
shoulders.
“When Death comes,” says a certain sage of ancient Egypt, “it seizes the
babe that is on the breast of its mother as well as him that has become
an old man. When thy messenger comes to carry thee away, be thou found
by him _ready_.” Why, here is our chance; here is the opportunity for
that flourish which modesty, throughout our life, has forbidden to us!
John Tiptoft, Earl of Worcester, when the time came for him to lay his
head upon the block, bade the executioner to smite it off with three
strokes as a courtesy to the Holy Trinity. King Charles the Second, as
he lay upon his death-bed, apologised to those who stood around him for
“being such an unconscionable time adying.” The story is familiar of
Napoleon’s aide-de-camp, who, when he had been asked whether he were
wounded, replied, “Not wounded, killed,” and thereupon expired. The Past
is full of such incidents; and so inspiring are they that Death comes to
be regarded as a most stirring adventure. The archæologist, too, better
than any other, knows the vastness of the dead men’s majority; and, if,
like the ancients, he believe in the Elysian fields, where no death is
and decay is unknown, he alone will realise the excellent nature of the
company into which he will there be introduced.
There is, however, far more living going on in the world than dying; and
there is more happiness (thanks be!) than sorrow. Thus the archæologist
has a great deal more of pleasure than of pain to give us for our
enrichment. The reader will here enter an objection. He will say: “This
may be true of archæology in general, but in the case of Egyptology,
with which we are here mostly concerned, he surely has to deal with a
sad and solemn people.” The answer is that no nation in the world’s
history has been so gay, so light-hearted as the ancient Egyptians; and
Egyptology furnishes, perhaps, the most convincing proof that archæology
is, or should be a merry science, very necessary to the gaiety of the
world. I defy a man suffering from his liver to understand the old
Egyptians; I defy a man who does not appreciate the pleasure of life to
make anything of them. Egyptian archæology presents a pageant of such
brilliancy that the archæologist is often carried along by it as in a
dream, down the valley and over the hills, till, Past blending with
Present, and Present with Future, he finds himself led to a kind of
Island of the Blest, where death is forgotten and only the joy of life,
and life’s good deeds, still remain; where pleasure-domes, and all the
ancient “miracles of rare device,” rise into the air from above the
flowers; and where the damsel with the dulcimer beside the running
stream sings to him of Mount Abora, and of the old heroes of the days
gone by. If the Egyptologist or the archæologist could revive within him
one-hundredth part of the elusive romance, the delicate gaiety, the
subtle humour, the intangible tenderness, the unspeakable goodness, of
much that is to be found in his province, one would have to cry, like
Coleridge:--
“Beware, beware!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.”