The Troad.

coveries have led him to take away our breath . The Palace of Priam which he has found consists of three small chambers , where it seems hardly conceivable that the King ' s 50 daughters-in law could be stowed away . Dr . Schliemann ' s Scsean Gate seems to lead nowhere in particular ,

as the Royal Palace , which rises athwart it on a higher foundation , is barring all progress , allowing no way either into or beyond it . Nothing more puzzling , also , than the hole in which the doctor has laid the foundation of the Tower of Ilium ; the

trench from behind which the Trojan bowmen shot their arrows , or the seat from which the ladies " with the long Court trains" sat watching the chances of the fight as it raged in the plain beneath . Nothing more wonderful than the " sacrificial altar in the temple of Minerva , with

the drain for carrying away the blood of the victims , " the altar a mere lump of earth which is rapidly crumbling to dust , and of which hardly a vestige will probably be found by any visitor looking for it six months hence . I am in the predicament of that

Frenchman who said of himself , " Ce que je sais , je le sais mal , mais se que j'ignore , je l'ignore parfaitement . " I know so absolutely nothing of the subject , that I dare not even imagine that Dr . Schliemann has been carried away by his sanguine

enthusiasm ; but certainly a chill of disappointment and scepticism seized me as I traced on the ground the localities upon which such great names have been bestowed , and to which such high importance is assigned in the doctor ' s map . Homer ' s Troy dwindles and shrinks clown to almost

contemptible proportions in Dr . Schliemann s hands , and one is amazed and humbled to find out of what wretched molehills the great mountain of the Iliad and Odyssey has been evolved . Dr . Schliemann had , doubtless , very arduous problems to solve , very serious difficulties to contend with .

He had to deal with a Troy built on the site of an old Troy several centuries after Priam ' s city was levelled with the ground , or , perhaps , of more than one old Troy , for Ugo Toledo , no mean Hellenist and Homerist , said" Ilio raso due volte e due risorto

Spleudidamente sulle mute vie , Per far piu bello 1 'ultimo trofeo Ai fatati Pelidi . "

The date of Priam s city is , by Dr . Schliemann , forced back far beyond the period assigned to his fall by common chronology—2000 years beyond Homer ' s own age . The ground to which the doctor devoted his search revealed to him , in -imposed laye .-sthe edificesthe

super , , weapons , the implements , and even the knick-knacks of four , or perhaps five , distinct epochs , which , in the very act of excavation , could not fail to be thrown together , and so jumbled as eventually to defy classification and description .

It were highly desirable that men of mature knowledge and sound judgment should g ive Dr . Schliemann ' s achievements clue consideration , and that they should put the ingenuous , but , perhaps , hasty conclusions he has arrived at to the test of

actual observation on the spot , and it would also be most just and reasonable that the doctor should , as he hopes , obtain from the Ottoman Government the long-solicited Firman empowering him to pursue those labours by which he has won so great a name for himself at the same time that he has bestowed an inestimable benefit on the learned world . It may happen then that

Mr . Gladstone will find himself at liberty to fulfil the promise he made to visit the doctor in his house or tent at Hissarlik , where the inspection of those ruins may suggest a modification of some of the views developed by the English scholar aud

statesman in his " Homeric Synchronism , " should he ever prepare a new edition of the work . For my own part , I am content to live with the present age , and to take at secondhand whatever knowledge better men may

supply with respect to the past . A visit to the Troad , I think , will have the effect of satisfying many men —as it has satisfied me—as to the length , width , and depth of their own blessed ignorance . No human researchhowever activecau keep pace

, , with the rapidity of the obliterating force of time . The pall of many ages lies ou the ruins of the world of Homeric tradition . Unlike the Roman Campagna , the plain of Troy can be travelled over for miles without everor very rarelymeeting those

, , relics with which one might expect so renowned a ground to be strewn . Whatever is dead in the old Trojan world is also buried . Where the antiquarian ' s spade