West Court, with its portico and
its seats along the palace wall, suggests considerable freedom of
access for the populace to the immediate neighbourhood of royalty.
It is perhaps rather a large inference to conclude that 'the very
architecture of the Palaces of Knossos and Phaestos may testify to
the power of the democracy';[*] but at least the thoughtfulness
with which the comfort of the people visiting the palace was provided
for, and the general openness and lack of any jealous seclusion,
testified to by the whole style of the buildings, suggest that
the relations between the Kings of the House of Minos and their
subjects were much more human and pleasant than those obtaining
in most ancient kingdoms.

[Footnote *: Mosso, 'The Palaces of Crete,' p. 163.]

From their art one would, on the whole, conclude the people to
have been a somewhat attractive race, frankly enjoying the more
pleasant aspects of life, and capable of a keen delight in all the
beauties of Nature. Minoan art has little that is sombre about it;
it is redolent of the open air and the free ocean, and a people who
so rejoiced in natural beauty and delighted to surround themselves
with their own reproductions and interpretations of it can scarcely
have been bowed beneath a heavy yoke of servitude, or have lived
other than a comparatively free and independent life. How much the
Greeks of the Classic period imbibed of the spirit of this gifted
and artistic race we can only imagine. The artistic standpoint of
the Hellenic Greek is somewhat different from that of his Minoan or
Mycenaean forerunner, and he has lost that keen feeling for Nature
which is so conspicuous in the work of the earlier stock; but the
two races are at least at one in that profound love of beauty which
is the dominant characteristic of the Greek nature, and it may
well be that something of that feeling formed part of the heritage
which the conqueror took over from the conquered, and which, added
to the virility and intellectual power of the northern race, made
the historic Greek the most brilliant type of humanity that the
world has ever seen.

CHAPTER XI

LETTERS AND RELIGION

Of all the discoveries yet made on Cretan soil, that which, in
the end, will doubtless prove to be of the greatest importance is
the discovery of the various systems of writing which the Minoans
successively devised and used. As yet knowledge with regard to these
systems has not advanced beyond th