But we are still waiting for our definition of what archæology is, and what are the ways in which it is to accomplish this desirable revivifying of the past. It has been defined by a well-known excavator and writer as “the study of the facts of ancient history and ancient lore”--which is very well as far as it goes, but omits, strangely enough, the very point in which its author has shown himself most keenly interested. To complete the definition, one would need to add, “and of ancient life in all aspects.” The archæologist deals with ancient history, and may prove helpful to the historian of the past in many ways; he deals with ancient lore, and may reveal material which is of the utmost importance for the study of the knowledge and literature of the past; but his main concern is always with the life of the past, and his main use to the world is to enable the present to see and to realise the life of the past as it really was, to give life again to the men of old so that they shall no longer be names in a dry text-book, but flesh-and-blood figures, and to do this for the common man of the past as well as for his rulers, so that ancient history shall no longer be the chronicle of the deeds, great or otherwise, of Pharaohs and monarchs of all sorts, but shall give you the whole many-coloured tapestry of life as it was in those far-off days with the fates of common men interwoven with the glittering destinies of their lords and masters. “Archæological research,” says Dr. R. A. S. Macalister in the latest summary of its results, “consists principally in the discovery and the classification of the common things of daily life, houses, personal ornaments, domestic utensils, tools, weapons, and the like.” To have said such a thing fifty years ago would have been to make the scientific man of those days hold up his hands in horror at such a degradation of a science whose chief end was the discovery of the great monuments of great men, and the substantiation or correction of history by their means.