HOW SLEEP THE BRAVE. How sleep the Brave who sink to rest By fairy hands their knell is rung, -COLLING. THE STUDY OF ARCHEOLOGY. ARCHEOLOGY has been called the handmaid of history; and, indeed, without its aid history would as little represent the particular time it endeavours to recall, as the drawing of a skeleton would represent the features and the form by which the individual human being was recognised while in life. It is to the skeleton of a former age that archæology restores the flesh and the sinews and the lineaments that distinguish it from the countless centuries of which it is a link, clothes it in the very garments that it wore, and rebuilds the very home in which it dwelt. But archæology is not only the handmaid of history, it is also the conservator of art. It disinters from neglected tombs the inventions of departed genius, and bids them serve as studies and sources of inspiration to the genius of a later day. When the Baths of Titus were excavated at Rome, the attention of Raphael was directed by a fellow artist to their faded arabesques. Those arabesques roused his own creative imagination, and under his pencil reappeared on the walls of the Vatican in new and original combinations of form and color. Nay, that discovery and the train of ideas it aroused, may be said to have suggested the delicate tracery and elaborate ornament of that new school of architecture called the Renaissance, out of which grew the palaces of Fontainebleau and Heidel 42 THE STUDY OF ARCHEOLOGY. berg, and which we have nationalized in England in those noble manorial residences which adorn the reigns of Elizabeth and James. But it is not only history and the plastic arts which are indebted to the science of the archæologist. It is amongst his labors to guard from oblivion the myths, the traditions, the legends of former days; and critical and severe though his genius and its obligations must be, still it is to his care that we owe the preservation of many a pure and sacred well-spring of poetry and romance,-well-springs from which Spenser and Milton, Dryden, Gray, Wordsworth, and Scott, have drawn each his own special stream of inspiration, to refresh the banks that he cultivated, and nourish the flowers that he reared. Last, and not least, of our obligations to the spirit of archæology, is that it stimulates and deepens in the heart of a people sentiments of pride and affection for the native land. In proportion as we cherish the memories of our ancestors, and revere the heirlooms they have left us, in monuments reared by their piety, or bearing witness of their lives and their deeds, the soil which they trod becomes hallowed ground; and we feel that patriotism is no idle name, but the mainspring of every policy which makes statesmen wise, and the borders of a state secure. Indeed, if we look back to the annals of the world we find that there is no surer sign of the impending downfall of any nation than a cynical contempt for the memorials of its old renown. When Gibbon gives us the mournful picture of Roman corruption and decrepitude, just before the final extinction of the Western Empire and the accession of a barbarian king to the throne of the Cæsars, he tells us "that the monuments of consular or imperial greatness were no longer revered as the glory of the capital; they were only esteemed as an inexhaustible mine of materials cheaper and more convenient than the distant quarry." And with this miserable desecration of objects that attested the majesty of Rome, the very name of the Roman passed away; and, to borrow the expression of a French writer "the descendants of Brutus became the vassals of the Goth." So long as we keep the past before us as a guide, we are not altogether (speaking humanly, and with due submission to the decrees of Providence), we are not altogether without some power to shape the future so as to preserve, through all its changes, that national spirit without which the unity of a race disappears. It has been vouchsafed to England to diffuse her children and her language amidst realms unknown to the ambition of Alexander, and far beyond the boldest flights of the Roman eagle. Ages hence, from the shores of Australasia and America, pilgrims. will visit this land as the birth-place of their ancestors, and venerate every relic of our glorious if chequered past, from the day of the Druid to that in which we now are; for while we speak we ourselves are acting history, and becoming in our turn the ancients to posterity. May no future Gibbon trace to the faults of our time the causes which insure the rise and fall of empires. Century after century may our descendants in those vast new worlds, compared to which Europe itself shrinks to the dimensions of a province or a shire,-century after century may they find still flourishing on these ancestral shores, not ashamed to number the men of our generation among its fathers, a race adorned by the graces of literature, and enriched by the stores of science. May they find still unimpaired, and sacred alike from superstition and unbelief, the altars of Christian faith; may our havens and docks still be animated by vessels fitted for commerce abroad, or armed, in case of necd, for defence at home. Still may our institutions and our liberties find the eloquence of freemen and patriots in our legislative halls, and the ermine of Justice be unsullied by a spot in the courts where she adjudicates between man and man. These are the noblest legacies we receive from the past; and while we treasure these at every hazard, and through every change, the soul of England will retain vitality to her form, and no archeologist will seek her grave amidst the nations that have passed away. -LORD LYTTON. . HONOR MUST BE ACTIVE. TIME hath, my lord, a wallet at his back, A great-sized monster of ingratitudes ; Those scraps are good deeds past, which are devoured As done. Perseverance, dear my lord, Keeps honor bright. To have done, is to hang 44 THE BATTLE OF ARBELA. Quite out of fashion, like a rusty mail, In monumental mockery. Take the instant way; Where one but goes abreast; keep then the path; That one by one pursue; if you give way, Or, like a gallant horse, fallen in the first rank, O'errun and trampled on. Then what they do in present That slightly shakes his parting guest by the hand, And farewell goes out sighing. Let not virtue seek For beauty, wit, High birth, vigor of bone, desert in service, To envious and calumniating time. One touch of nature makes the whole world kin- More laud than gilt o'erdusted. The present eye praises the present object. -SHAKESPEARE THE BATTLE OF ARBELA. (B.C. 331.) GREAT reliance had been placed by the Persian king on the effects of the scythe-bearing chariots. It was designed to launch these against the Macedonian phalanx, and to follow these up by a heavy charge of cavalry, which it was hoped would find the ranks of the spearmen disordered by the rush of the chariots, and easily destroy this most formidable part of Alexander's force. In front, therefore, of the Persian centre, where Darius took his station, and which it was supposed the phalanx would attack, the ground had been carefully levelled and smoothed, so as to allow the chariots to charge over it with their full sweep and speed. As the Macedonian army approached the Persian, Alexander found that the front of his whole line barely equalled the front of the Persian centre, so that he was outflanked on his right by the entire left wing of the enemy, and by their entire right wing on his left. His tactics were to assail some one point of the hostile army, and gain a decisive advantage while he refused, as far as possible, the encounter along the rest of the line. He therefore inclined his order of march to the right, so as to enable his right wing and centre to come into collision with the enemy on as favourable terms as possible though the manœuvre might in some respect compromise his left. The effect of this oblique movement was to bring the phalanx and his own wing nearly beyond the limits of the ground which the Persians had prepared for the operations of the chariots: and Darius, fearing to lose the benefit of this arm against the most important parts of the Macedonian force, ordered the Scythian and Bactrian cavalry, who were drawn up in advance on his extreme left, to charge round upon Alexander's right wing, and check its further lateral progress. Against these assailants Alexander sent, from his second line, Menidas's cavalry. As these proved too few to make head against the enemy, he ordered Ariston also from the second line with his light horse, and Cleander with his foot, in support of Menidas. The Bactrians and Scythians now began to give way, but Darius reinforced them by the mass of Bactrian cavalry from his main line, and an obstinate cavalry fight now took place. The Bactrians and Scythians were numerous, and were better armed than the horsemen under Menidas and Ariston; and the loss at first was heaviest on the Macedonian side. But still the European cavalry stood the charge of the Asiatics, and at last, by their superior discipline, and by acting in squadrons that supported each other, instead of fighting in a confused mass like the barbarians, the Macedonians broke their adversaries, and drove them off the field. Darius now directed the scythe-armed chariots to be driven against Alexander's horseguards and the phalanx; and these formidable vehicles were accordingly sent rattling across the plain, against the Macedonian line. When we remember the alarm which the war-chariots of the Britons created among Cæsar's legions, we shall not be prone to deride this arm of ancient warfare as always useless. The object of the chariots |