covered at
the same time some interesting objects connected with ancient Grecian
history; having, for example, during the occupation of Constantinople in
1854 by the armies of England and France, laid bare to its base and
carefully copied the inscription, engraved some twenty-three centuries
ago, upon the brazen stand of the famous tripod which was dedicated by
the confederate Greeks to Apollo at Delphi, after the defeat of the
Persian host at Platea,--an inscription that Herodotus himself speaks
of, and by which, indeed, the Father of History seems to have
authenticated his own battle-roll of the Greek combatants. Archaeology
has busied itself also, particularly of late years, in disinterring the
ruins of numerous old Roman villas, towns, and cities in Italy, in
France, in Britain, and in the other western colonies of Home; and by
this measure it has gained for us a clearer and nearer insight into
every-day Roman life and habits, than all the wealth of classic
literature supplies us with. Though perfectly acquainted with the
Etruscan alphabet, it has hitherto utterly failed to read a single line
of the numerous inscriptions found in Etruria, but yet among the
unwritten records and relics of the towns and tombs of that ancient
kingdom, it has recovered a wonderfully complete knowledge of the
manners, and habits, and faith, of a great and prosperous nation,
which--located in the central districts of Italy--was already far
advanced in civilisation and refinement long before that epoch when
Romulus is fabled to have drawn around the Palatine the first boundary
line of the infant city which was destined to become the mistress of the
world. Latterly, among all the western and northern countries of Europe,
in Germany, in Scandinavia, in Denmark, in France, and in the British
Islands, Archaeology has made many careful and valuable collections of
the numerous and diversified implements, weapons, etc., of the
aboriginal inhabitants of these parts, and traced by them the
stratifications, as it were, of progress and civilisation, by which our
primaeval ancestors successively passed upwards through the varying eras
and stages of advancement, from their first struggles in the battle of
life with tools of stone, and flint, and bone alone, till they
discovered and applied the use of metals in the arts alike of peace and
war; from those distant ages in which, dressed in the skins of animals,
they wore ornaments made of sea-shells and je