, therefore, I state that one of the writings herein translated has
an age of nearly six thousand years, and that another is but five
hundred years younger, it is likely that many will find this sufficient
reason against further perusal, deeming it impossible that such things
can possess attraction for one not an enthusiast for them. Yet so few
are the voices across so great a span of years that those among them
having anything to tell us should be welcome exceedingly; whereas, for
the most part, they have cried in the {13} wilderness of neglect
hitherto, or fallen on ears filled with the clamour of more instant
things.

I could show, if this were a fitting place, that Archaeology is not at
all divorced from life, nor even devoid of emotion as subtle and
strange, as swift and moving, as that experienced by those who love and
follow Art. She, Archaeology, is, for those who know her, full of such
emotion; garbed in an imperishable glamour, she is raised far above the
turmoil of the present on the wings of Imagination. Her eyes are
sombre with the memory of the wisdom driven from her scattered
sanctuaries; and at her lips wonderful things strive for utterance. In
her are gathered together the longings and the laughter, the fears and
failures, the sins and splendours and achievements of innumerable
generations of men; and by her we are shown all the elemental and
terrible passions of the unchanging soul of man, to which all cultures
and philosophies are but garments to hide its nakedness; and thus in
her, as in Art, some of us may realise ourselves. Withal she is
heavy-hearted, making continual lamentation for a glory that has
withered and old hopes without fulfilment; and all her habitations are
laid waste.

As for the true lover of all old and forgotten things, it may justly be
said of him, as of the poet, _Nascitur, non fit_. For the dreams and
the wonder are with him from the beginning; and in early childhood,
knowing as yet hardly {14} the names of ancient peoples, he is
conscious of, and yearns instinctively toward, an immense and
ever-receding past. With the one, as with the other, the unaccountable
passion is so knitted into his soul that it will never, among a
thousand distractions and adverse influences, entirely forsake him; nor
can such an one by willing cause it to come or to depart. He will live
much in imagination, therein treading fair places now enwrapped in
their inevitable shroud of wind-blown s