importance and by various poets, there is neither in German nor in Italian any poem that can for one moment compare with the supreme pieces I have named. So pre-eminent are the Greeks in literature. Their other art has not survived save in ruins or fragments. But ask any real specialist, such as the late Mr. Penrose, or Dr. Dörpfeld, what place the best Greek architecture holds in the buildings of the world, and he will tell you that never again can anything equal to the Parthenon at Athens be constructed. The huge temple at Karnak in Egypt, the marvellous church of Justinian at Constantinople, the lovely cathedral of Rheims are probably the best specimens of perfection in building which we possess, yet the Parthenon, with its apparent simplicity, shows a subtle depth of artistic knowledge which justifies us in calling it the finest of earthly buildings. Need I say one word of Greek supremacy in other arts here, seeing that the details must form the subject of subsequent lectures? The danger I see before this generation is that which came upon the Roman world insensibly and which resulted in a decadence not arrested till it sank into the night of the dark ages. The later empire was content to take Greek art and Greek letters at second hand, and to substitute Latin culture for the models which had educated their greatest masters. But as I have already told you the copy had not the life of the original. So we too, with all our science, with our increase of material knowledge and our restless running to and fro, may sink into an ugly, tame, joyless conglomeration of societies, for whom new discoveries supply hosts of new conveniences, but no return to the happiness and the contentment of a simpler age. Our purblind toothless children may have their congenital defects vamped up by science, and without it we should indeed be stranded upon the reefs of despair. But happiness does not lie here, no, nor in motors, nor in turbines, nor in wireless messages across the globe, nor in daily newspapers full of inextricable fact and falsehood.