den times, all the majesty, all the power, are the
inheritance of the present day; and the archaeologist 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 the
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 archaeologist, a
remembrancer of the Past.

In the case of archaeology, however, the public does not permit itself so
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 archaeology is often
misunderstood both by archaeologists 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, 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 i