My contention is that M. Bischoff and Herr Crapiloni have made a very ridiculous mistake (I will not call it by a harsher name) in representing this head to be a figure of Winter. In one case (that of M. Bischoff) I have no doubt that patriotic notions were too strong for a well-balanced judgment;[66] but in the other, I am at a loss to find a sufficient basis for a statement which is not only false, but calculated to do a grave hurt to history and even to public morals. M. Bischoff admits that he visited England in company with Herr Crapiloni--I have no doubt that the latter influenced the former, and that the blame and shame of this matter must fall on the ultra-montane German and not on the philosophical but enthusiastic Gaul. For my opponents’ abuse of myself in the columns of such rags as the _Bulletin de la Société Historique de Bourges_, or the _Revue d’Histoire Romaine_, I have only contempt and pity; but _we_ in _England_ are taught that a lie on any matter is equally serious, and I will be no party to the calling of the Mosaic a figure of “Winter” when I am convinced it is nothing of the kind. As far as I can make out from their somewhat turgid rhetoric, my opponents rely upon the inscription “Hiems” put in with white stones beneath the mosaic, and they argue that, as the other four corners are admitted to be “Spring,” “Summer,” and “Autumn,” each with their title beneath, _therefore_ this fourth corner must be Winter! It is just such an argument from analogy as I should have expected from men brought up in the corrupt morality and the base religious conceptions of the Continent! When one is taught that authority is everything and cannot use one’s judgment,[67] one is almost certain to jump at conclusions in this haphazard fashion in dealing with definite facts. For my part I am convinced that the head is the portrait of the Roman proprietor of the villa, and I am equally convinced that the title “Hiems” has been added below at a later date, so as to furnish a trap for all self-sufficient and gullible historians. Are my continental critics aware that _no single copy_ of the mosaic is to be found in the whole of the Roman Remains of Britain? Are they aware the villa at Bignor has changed hands three times in this century? I do not wish to make any insinuations of bad faith, but I would hint that the word “Hiems” has a fresh new look about it which puzzles me.