present of a child's history of the world, in which the picture
of the destruction of Troy and the flight of AEneas made a profound
impression upon his young mind, and roused in him a passionate desire
to go and see for himself what remained of the ancient splendours
of Ilium. He found it impossible to believe that the massive
fortifications of Troy had vanished without leaving a trace of
their existence. When his father admitted that the walls were once
as huge as those depicted in his history book, but asserted that
they were now totally destroyed, he retorted: 'Father, if such walls
once existed, they cannot possibly have been completely destroyed;
vast ruins of them must still remain, but they are hidden beneath
the dust of ages.' Already he had made the resolution that some
day he would excavate Troy.

The romance of bygone days and of hidden treasure surrounded the
boy's early years, and no doubt had its own influence in determining
his bent. A pond just behind his father's garden had its legend of
a maiden who rose from its waters each midnight, bearing a silver
bowl. In the village an ancient barrow had its story of a robber
knight who had buried his favourite child there in a golden cradle;
and near by was the old castle of Henning von Holstein, who, when
besieged by the Duke of Mecklenburg, had buried his treasures close
to the keep of his stronghold. On such romantic legends Schliemann's
young imagination was nourished. By the time he was ten years old
he had produced a Latin essay on the Trojan War. Such things, which
in another might have been mere childish precocities, were in him
the indications of an enthusiasm for antiquity, which was destined
to be the ruling passion of his whole life.

Yet the beginnings of his career in the world were unromantic to
the last degree. His father's poverty forced him to give up the hope
of a learned life, and at the age of fourteen he was apprenticed
to a small grocer in a country village, in whose employment, surely
uncongenial enough for such a spirit, he spent five and a half
years, selling butter, herrings, potato-brandy and the like, and
occupying his spare moments in tidying out the little shop. Even in
such circumstances his passion for the Homeric story found means,
sufficiently quaint, for its gratification. There came one evening
to the shop a miller's man, who had been well educated, but had
fallen into poor circumstances, and had taken to drink, yet even