I answered my questioners by pointing out that I was not a bookworm, whose interest was confined to ancient books and archæological parchments; that life in all its aspects interested me, and that I was, therefore, curious, after devoting so much attention to ancient peoples, to study awhile the most modern of nations, the newest comers in the history of our civilisation. Did my friends suppose that, because I had written a history of Rome, I had pledged myself never again to direct my gaze to modern life? But, though I explained the reason for my voyage in this way, I, no less than my friendly objectors, was convinced at that time that my travels in America would be only a parenthesis in my intellectual life. In other words, I thought that I was going to America in search of an intellectual diversion, hoping for some relaxation for my mind, obsessed for the last ten years by ancient history, in bringing it to bear on an entirely different world. That this diversion would be useful to me, I had no doubt; but not because America might help me to a better understanding of ancient Rome, but because to change every now and again the subject-matter of my studies and to enrich my mind with new impressions always seemed to me one of the most profitable intellectual exercises, especially for a historian to whom a wide experience of human nature is a necessity. To-day, after having made not one, but two journeys to America, after having seen not only the two largest and most flourishing states of South America, but also that North America which, more than all the other states of the New World, represents in the eyes of contemporaries the more modern part of our civilisation, the reign of machinery, the empire of business, the rule of money, I am no longer of this opinion. It is my present belief that a journey in the New World is of supreme benefit intellectually to a historian of the ancient world; and that, in order to understand the life and history of Greek or Roman society, it is perhaps just as important to visit the countries of America as Asia Minor or Northern Africa. That is what I said on one of the last days of my stay in the United States to a genial professor of ancient history connected with Cornell University, with whom I was discussing the most famous schools of the present day for the pursuit of historical studies, and the methods adopted in these schools. “Many of you Americans,” I said, “go to European universities to study ancient history. It seems to me that you might well invite many European professors to come and go through a finishing course in America, studying not only in libraries but in the live world, and observing what happens in American society. Nobody is in a better position than are you to understand ancient society.” My remark may seem at first sight a paradox. But it is no paradox, if one goes to the root of the problem. For what we, men of the twentieth