To Dutch, Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese he allowed only six weeks each. During the eight years from 1846 to 1854 he was so much occupied in business that he had no time for literature; in the latter end, however, of the second year he found time to learn Swedish and Polish. It was not till January, 1856, that he ventured to attack Greek, his fear being, as he naïvely remarks, that the fascination of its study might interfere with his commercial duties. Aided however by two Greek friends, he tells us he learnt modern Greek in six weeks, and, in three months more, sufficient classical Greek to understand the ancient writers, and especially Homer. In 1858 Dr. Schliemann was able to travel over Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Italy, and Egypt, on the way learning somewhat of (we presume colloquial) Arabic, and returning thence through Syria and Athens to St. Petersburg. It was not, however, till 1863 that he had secured, by his vigorous commercial occupations, the means to spend the rest of his life as he pleased. His first plan, in 1864, was to visit the fatherland of Ulysses, but this was only a hasty and flying trip, and he was, shortly afterwards, induced to extend his journey to India, China, and Japan. On his return to Europe he spent some time in Paris, but made also, thence, journeys to Greece and the plains of Troy, an account of which, written, it would seem, about 1868, he has given in the first volume of his recent work. This volume contains, _inter alia_, the result of his studies among the “Cyclopean” works in Argolis, a knowledge of great value to him when he commenced his more important excavations. He seems also, about this period, to have carefully examined the Troad, and to have satisfied himself that Hissarlik was the place at which to commence his excavations. Having married a Greek lady, in every sense a “help-meet” for the work he had set himself to do, he went again to the Troad in the spring of 1870, and, having secured an ample number of labourers, continued his excavations there during the greater part of the period between the autumn of 1871 and the summer of 1873.