ἑταῖροι, the θεράποντες, that fought around Achilleus rise again in the true _gesiðas_, the faithful _þegnas_, of our own folk, in Lilla who gave his life for Eadwine and in the men who died, thegn-like, their lord hard by, around the corpse of Brihtnoth at Maldon. Still all this is but likeness, example, analogy, derivation from a common source; we are dealing, not with forefathers but with elder brethren. The laws of Lykourgos and Solôn have passed away; it is the laws of Servius and Justinian that still abide. The empire of Mykênê, the democracy of Athens, the league of Achaia, are all things of the past. If the Empire of Rome is no longer a thing of the present, if it has passed away, if it is dead and buried, it is well to remember that there are still men living who have seen its funeral. I am myself not old enough to have seen its funeral; but I have before now seen some look amazed when I told them that I had lived on the earth for twelve years along with a man who had once been Emperor of the Romans. * * * * * The days before the Roman power may be looked on as in some sort the preface to a volume the last page of which is not written, as the porch of a building which still stands and which architects to come may still add to or take from. It is with Rome that the chapters of the book itself begin; it is Rome that reared the first still inhabited chambers of the house. Or we may rather say that the tale of the days before Rome is a summary, short and brilliant, of all that man has done or can do. The tale of Hellas shows us a glorified ideal of human powers, held up to the world for a moment to show what man can be, but to show us also that such he cannot be for long. And herein is the highest glory of Greece; herein is the highest value of the tongue and history of Greece as supplying the truest and noblest teaching for the mind of man. In no other study are we so truly seeking knowledge simply to raise and school the mind; in none do we so sharply draw the still abiding line between those who have gone through the refining furnace of those immortal studies and the barbarians--sometimes the self-condemned barbarians--who stand without. When we study the tongue, the laws, the history, of our own people, of any people of our immediate kindred, of that people who, whether conquering or conquered, were still the masters of us all, we are as it were engaged in our own work, we are busy with the toil of our own daily life; it is still something of a business, something of a calling. In our Hellenic studies we stand on a loftier height, we breathe a purer air, even as the peak of Olympos overtops the height of Alba. We master the tongue of Latium, because it is still the tongue of no small part of the business of practical life, because it meets us at every turn as an essential part of our own law, our own history, our very daily being. We master the tongue of