e historian, and perchance the tomb
itself, are rediscovered; and the great man begins his third life, now
as a subject of discussion and controversy amongst archaeologists in the
pages of a scientific journal. It may be supposed that the spirit of the
great man, not a little pleased with its 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 archaeologist 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 archaeological 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 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 th