The list of these objects, and of their ornaments, is on the whole richer and more diversified than the Poems, with the exception of the famous Shield of Achilles, would have led us to expect. Possibly a knowledge of the Mycenean treasures may have prompted or aided a vigorous imagination, in that wonderful anticipation of excellences which had not been realized in practice. The most remarkable feature, I think, of all Homer's delineations of art is the force and reality with which he confers animation on things inanimate. And perhaps the eye may be struck, in examining Schliemann's illustrations, with the vigour of life and motion which asserts itself in many of the Mycenean works, where the delineation is technically most imperfect. But we cannot compare the text with these remains alone; we are bound also to avail ourselves of such light as can be had from Hissarlik, whatever its effect upon our prepossessions or our arguments. Now I, for one, am struck with the wealth of Mycenæ, and the comparative poverty of what is probably Troy. I do not mean merely as to the small number of valuable remains, for this may be due to chance; though, indeed, fortune, for once renouncing her caprice, seems in both cases to have obeyed the dictates of archæological justice, and to have treated Dr. and Mrs. Schliemann as her favourite children. But I mean that there is far less of _luxe_ in the ornamentation of the works at Hissarlik; I might, perhaps, say no representation at all of life, except in the rudest and most barbarous form. There seem to be very good forms in the gold and silver objects of Hissarlik, but always associated with plain work; no animal or even vegetable representation calling for notice from the present point of view, none of the _repoussé_ work, nothing resembling the (apparently) beautiful cylinder (p. 287), or the elaborate rings photographed in this volume. How are we to account for this? And does an argument hence arise, that the Hissarlik remains belong to a period different from, and anterior to, that which produced the works at Mycenæ? That the adverse case may be made as strong as possible, let it be borne in mind that while Homer indicates Orchomenos, and above all Egyptian Thebes, as the wealthiest cities of his little world, he seems designedly to assign the very same stage of opulence to Troy, which he gives to Mycenæ; for he describes by one and the same epithet, _poluchrusos_, which means gold-abounding, these two cities and these two alone. Troy has it in _Il._ XVIII. 289. For Mycenæ it was almost a formula; see _Il._ VII. 180, XI. 46; _Od._ III. 305.