In recent years there has been a very considerable tendency amongst jaded people to revive within themselves the pleasures of their childhood by an ardent, though often somewhat forced, emulation of the habits of infancy. The charm of the grown man or woman who can play joyously with children, and can enter enthusiastically into their amusements, has been perceived, and an attempt has been made to acquire this faculty. To play with children, however, requires the employment of a rare talent, of a difficult art; and there are many who, though loving the society of the young, feel aware after a while of the loss of a real interest in their pretences. It is no longer a pleasure, nay it is an agony, to fall headlong upon the lawn in the manner of a slain warrior; it is with a distressing effort of body and mind that we may now crawl under the bed and believe ourselves thus to have penetrated into an Oriental castle. To those who desire to retain their childhood’s atmosphere yet are conscious of these difficulties, a study of the days when the world was young comes as the supplying of a long-felt want. We who in our individual lives realise with sorrow how very far we have travelled from the schoolroom and the nursery, need not struggle vainly to revive interest in our own forgotten games; we may hasten instead to the world’s childhood, there whole-heartedly to romp and wrestle, laugh and cry, make-believe and frolic, with the men and women of the Past. We shall not find ourselves too clumsy to play with _their_ toys, nor too big to crawl into _their_ houses, for their toys are real armies and kingdoms, and their houses real palaces of marble. The writing of the history of the Past--I do not mean the collection of the data upon which the narrative is based--must no longer be regarded as the particular field of the very serious: rather let the deeds of To-day claim the dignified treatment of weighty men; for the Present and not the Past is the antiquated age, the age hung with cobwebs, the age that is as old as the hills. The story which the historian has to tell should be made to glow in the imagination, to be young and virile and full of the element of life; for of all men the student of the Past is the most closely in touch with Youth. INDEX Akhmim, 246-8 Akhnaton, 20, 86, 153-173, 184-9, 239 Alabaster, quarries, 235-44 Amenhotepsase, 118 Amenophis II., 157 Amenophis III., 155-60, 168, 175-6 Amon-Ra, 47-68, 159-72, 178 Amorites, 169 Anena, 13 Ani, 130 Archæology, study of, 3-45, 84-108 Asceticism, 117-8 Ashmolean Museum, 35 Athenæus, 130 Aton, 159-78, 183, 196 Atum of Heliopolis, 159 Ay, 181, 189 Ayrton, Mr., 191 Bacon, 328 Bast, 129 Bedel, 51, 55 Breasted, Prof., 52, 166, 278 Browne, Sir Thomas, 92 Brugsch, Emil, 137 Bubastis, 129-30 Burke, Edmund, 89 Cambyses, 92 Carnarvon, Lord, 101, 137, 142 Carnarvon Tablet, 87 Carter, Howard, 14, 101, 137, 185 Charlemagne, 138 Charles II., 44 Coleridge, 32, 45