When a great man puts a period to his existence upon earth by dying, he is carefully buried in a tomb, and a monument is set up to his glory in the neighbouring church. He may then be said to begin his second life, his life in the memory of the chronicler and historian. After the lapse of an aeon or two the works of the historian, and perchance the tomb itself, are rediscovered; and the great man begins his third life, now as a subject of discussion and controversy amongst archaeologists in the pages of a scientific journal. It may be supposed that the spirit of the great man, not a little pleased with its second life, has an extreme distaste for his third. There is a dead atmosphere about it which sets him yawning as only his grave yawned before. The charm has been taken from his deeds; there is no longer any spring in them. He must feel towards the archaeologist much as a young man feels towards his cold-blooded parent by whom his love affair has just been found out. The public, too, if by chance it comes upon this archaeological journal, finds the discussion nothing more than a mental gymnastic, which, as the reader drops off to sleep, gives him the impression that the writer is a man of profound brain capacity, but, like the remains of the great man of olden times, as dry as dust. There is one thing, however, which has been overlooked. This scientific journal does not contain the ultimate results of the archaeologist's researches. It contains the researches themselves. The public, so to speak, has been listening to the pianist playing his morning scales, has been watching the artist mixing his colours, has been examining the unshaped block of marble and the chisels in the sculptor's studio. It must be confessed, of course, that the archaeologist has so enjoyed his researches that often the ultimate result has been overlooked by him. In the case of Egyptian archaeology, for example, there are only two Egyptologists who have ever set themselves to write a readable history,[1] whereas the number of books which record the facts of the science is legion. [Footnote 1: Professor J.H. Breasted and Sir Gaston Maspero.] The archaeologist not infrequently lives, for a large part of his time, in a museum, a somewhat dismal place. He is surrounded by rotting tapestries, decaying bones, crumbling stones, and rusted or corroded objects. His indoor work has paled his cheek, and his muscles are not like iron bands. He stands, often, in the contiguity to an ancient broadsword most fitted to demonstrate the fact that he could never use it. He would probably be dismissed his curatorship were he to tell of any dreams which might run in his head--dreams of the time when those tapestries hung upon the walls of barons' banquet-halls, or when those stones rose high above the streets of Camelot.