The second treasury lately excavated by Mrs. Schliemann has been disappointing in its results. Though it seems not to have been disturbed for ages, it had evidently been once rifled, for nothing save a few fragments of pottery were found within. Its entrance is much loftier than that of the house of Atreus, but the general building is inferior, the stones are far smaller and by no means so well fitted, and it produces altogether the impression of being either a much earlier and ruder attempt, or a poor and feeble imitation. Though Dr. Schliemann asserts the former, I am disposed to suspect the latter to be the case. A great deal of what was said about the tomb of Agamemnon, as the common people, with truer instinct, call the supposed treasure-house, may be repeated about the fortifications of Mycenæ. It is the work of builders who know perfectly how to deal with their materials—who can hew and fit great blocks of stone with perfect ease; nay, who prefer, for the sake of massive effect, to make their doorway with such enormous blocks as even modern science would find it difficult to handle. The sculpture over the gate fortunately remains almost entire. The two lions, standing up at a small pillar, were looking out fiercely at the stranger. The heads are gone, having probably, as Dr. Schliemann first observed, been made of bronze, and riveted to the stone. The rest of the sculpture is intact, and is of a strangely heraldic character. It is a piece of bluish limestone,(179) which must have been brought from a long distance, quite different from the rough breccia of the rest of the gate. The lintel-stone is not nearly so vast as that of the treasure-house: it is only fifteen feet long, but is somewhat thicker, and also much deeper, going back the full depth of the gateway. Still it must weigh a good many tons; and it puzzles us to think how it can have been put into its place with the appliances then in vogue. The joint use of square and polygonal masonry is very curious. Standing within the gate, one side is of square-hewn stones, the other of irregular, though well-fitted, blocks. On the left side, looking into the gate, there is a gap of one block in the wall, which looks very like a window,(180) as it is not probable that a single stone was taken, or fell out of its place afterward, without disturbing the rest. What makes it, perhaps, more possible that this window is intentional, is the position of the gate, which is not in the middle of the walled causeway, as you enter, but to the right side.