To write of the progress of archæology in this century is scarcely possible, as the idea of the subject was unknown a hundred years ago; it is, therefore, the whole history of its opening and development that we have to deal with. The conception of the history of man being preserved to us in material facts, and not only in written words, was quite disregarded until the growth of geology had taught men to read nature for themselves, instead of trusting to the interpretations formed by their ancestors. Even down to the present the academic view is that classical archæology is more important than other branches, because it serves to illustrate classical literature. Looked at as archæology, it is, on the contrary, the least important branch, because we already know so much more of the classical ages than we do of others. It is only within the present generation that it has been realized that wherever man has lived he has left the traces of his action, and that a systematic and observant study of those remains will interpret to us what his life was, what his abilities and tastes were, and the extent and nature of his mind. Literature is but one branch of the archæology of the higher races; another—equally important for the understanding of man—is art; these two give the highest and most complex and characteristic view of the nature of a race. At the opposite end of the scale are the rudest stone weapons which remain as the sole traces of the savages who used them. These highest and lowest evidences of mind, and all that lies between them, are the domain of archæology. We now purpose to review the growth of archæology in contact with geology, where it concerns man as the last of the links of life on the globe; and then to notice the archæology of each country in turn, as it leads on to the times of historical record, and so passes down to modern times. A century ago the world of thought was divided between the old and new ideas very differently from what is now the case. Then there stood on one side the idea of a special creation of an individual man, at 4000 B. C.; the compression of all human history into a prehistoric age of about three thousand years, and a fairly logical solution of most of the difficulties of understanding in a comfortable teleology. On the other hand stood many who felt the inherent improbability of such solutions of the problem of life, and who were feeling their way to some more workable theory on the basis of Laplace, Lamarck, Erasmus Darwin, and others; vaguely mingling together questions of physics, geology, archæology, anthropology, and theology, each of which we now see must be treated on its own basis, and be decided on internal evidence, before we can venture to let it affect our judgment on other points.