At Cambridge the study of archæology had forcibly taken possession of me by right of love, and at last I was working at that which it was my business to be occupied in, with devotion to my subject. Roman art, so I speedily discovered, was an utterly hideous and debased affair in itself, and the only things of beauty that emerged from Rome were copies of Greek originals, and even then these copies were probably made by Greek workmen. In Roman buildings also all that was worth looking at was stolen from the Greeks, and often marred in the stealing, and the thick mortar between their roughly hewn stones, the facing of them with a dishonest veneer of marble, their abominable tessellated pavements, the odious wall decorations of Pompeii revolted this ardent Hellenist. Now, too, for the first time since I came up to Cambridge, I came under an inspired and inspiring teacher; indeed, there were two such, for it was impossible not to burn when Dr. Waldstein in the Museum of Casts flung himself into Hellenic attitudes, and communicated his volcanic enthusiasm. But more inspiring yet was Professor Middleton: he gave me no formal lectures, but encouraged me to bring my books to his room, and spend the morning there. He used to walk about in a thick dressing-gown and a skull-cap, looking like some Oriental magician, and now he would pull an intaglio ring off his finger and make me perceive the serene and matchless sobriety of an early gem as compared with the more florid design, still matchless in workmanship, of a later century, or take half a dozen Greek coins out of his waistcoat pocket and bid me decipher the thick decorative letters and tell him where they came from. He had dozens of notebooks filled with sketches of Greek mouldings and cornices: there were sections of the columns of the Parthenon that showed how the drums had been ground round each on the other, till, without any mess of mortar, they adhered so closely that the joint was scarcely visible. There were cedar-wood blocks in the centres of them with bronze pins round which they revolved; the honesty and precision of the workmanship could never be discovered till the column was in ruins. But there was the very spirit and ardency of Greece; and as for the great frieze of horsemen sculptured on the walls of the Parthenon it was so placed that only a mere glimpse of it could be had by those who walked in the colonnade. Yet in honour of the goddess and in obedience to the imperious craving for perfection, it, though scarcely to be seen, must be of a fineness and finish unequalled in all the forums of Rome. Then Middleton would take a fragment of Greek pottery from a drawer, or a white _lekythus_ from Eretria, and show me the mark of the potter’s wheel, and how the white ground was laid on after the baking, and how the artist with brush delicate and unerring had drawn the raised arm of the _ephebus_ who laid his garland on the tomb. There were photographs