13. If travellers had for some time been aware of these general facts concerning the Mounds, it was many years before their curiosity and interest were so far aroused as to make them go to the trouble and expense of digging into them, in order to find out what they really contained. Until within the last hundred years or so, not only the general public, but even highly cultivated men and distinguished scholars, under the words "study of antiquity," understood no more than the study of so-called "_Classical_ Antiquity," i.e., of the language, history and literature of the Greeks and Romans, together with the ruins, works of art, and remains of all sorts left by these two nations. Their knowledge of other empires and people they took from the Greek and Roman historians and writers, without doubting or questioning their statements, or--as we say now--without subjecting their statements to any criticism. Moreover, European students in their absorption in and devotion to classical studies, were too apt to follow the example of their favorite authors and to class the entire rest of the world, as far as it was known in ancient times, under the sweeping and somewhat contemptuous by-name of "Barbarians," thus allowing them but a secondary importance and an inferior claim to attention. 14. Things began greatly to change towards the end of the last century. Yet the mounds of Assyria and Babylonia were still suffered to keep their secret unrevealed. This want of interest may be in part explained by their peculiar nature. They are so different from other ruins. A row of massive pillars or of stately columns cut out on the clear blue sky, with the desert around or the sea at their feet,--a broken arch or battered tombstone clothed with ivy and hanging creepers, with the blue and purple mountains for a background, are striking objects which first take the eye by their beauty, then invite inspection by the easy approach they offer. But these huge, shapeless heaps! What labor to remove even a small portion of them! And when that is done, who knows whether their contents will at all repay the effort and expense?