There is, however, far more living going on in the world than dying; and there is more happiness (thanks be!) than sorrow. Thus the archæologist has a great deal more of pleasure than of pain to give us for our enrichment. The reader will here enter an objection. He will say: “This may be true of archæology in general, but in the case of Egyptology, with which we are here mostly concerned, he surely has to deal with a sad and solemn people.” The answer is that no nation in the world’s history has been so gay, so light-hearted as the ancient Egyptians; and Egyptology furnishes, perhaps, the most convincing proof that archæology is, or should be a merry science, very necessary to the gaiety of the world. I defy a man suffering from his liver to understand the old Egyptians; I defy a man who does not appreciate the pleasure of life to make anything of them. Egyptian archæology presents a pageant of such brilliancy that the archæologist is often carried along by it as in a dream, down the valley and over the hills, till, Past blending with Present, and Present with Future, he finds himself led to a kind of Island of the Blest, where death is forgotten and only the joy of life, and life’s good deeds, still remain; where pleasure-domes, and all the ancient “miracles of rare device,” rise into the air from above the flowers; and where the damsel with the dulcimer beside the running stream sings to him of Mount Abora, and of the old heroes of the days gone by. If the Egyptologist or the archæologist could revive within him one-hundredth part of the elusive romance, the delicate gaiety, the subtle humour, the intangible tenderness, the unspeakable goodness, of much that is to be found in his province, one would have to cry, like Coleridge:-- “Beware, beware! Weave a circle round him thrice, And close your eyes with holy dread, For he on honey-dew hath fed, And drunk the milk of Paradise.” CHAPTER III THE MISFORTUNES OF WENAMON In the previous chapter it has been suggested that the archæologist is, to some extent, enamoured of the Past because it can add to the stock of things which are likely to tickle the fancy. So humorous a man is he, so fond of the fair things of life, so stirred by its adventures, so touched by its sorrows, that he must needs go to the Past to augment the supplies provided by the Present. Here, then, is the place to give an example of the entertainment which he is likely to find in this province of his; and if the reader can detect any smell of dust or hear any creak of dead bones in the story which follows, it will be a matter of surprise to me.