changed in the same direction, the direc- | sees with wide impartiality their relations tion of impoverishment and decay. and their corollaries. In purpose, in enHomer tells us of splendid palaces glitter- thusiasm, in life he had been trained, and ing with gold and bronze, shining through trained in the severest of schools, but he the land with a light like the light of sun could not of course be called a savant or and moon, palaces in which dwelt fairy an educated archæologist. His imaginakings like the wise Alcinous or the tion had not been trained to work in harwealthy Menelaus. But he tells us little ness, nor his intellect to recognize the about them. What is really familiar to subtle lines which divide the probable the author of the Iliad is the tents by the from the possible, or the possible from the seashore where dwell the warriors amid chimerical. Thus many of his views, and constant alarms of war. And when the especially of his views in regard to Ilium, author of the Odyssey depicts for us the were inadequate and untenable. To the palace of Ulysses he depicts not so much last he had an exaggerated notion of what a palace as a substantial farmhouse, where | was historical in early Greek legend; the swine wallow in the court and maids are siege of Troy was so real to his imaginabusy with their mills. The splendor of tion that he could not bring himself to life is with Homer in the past, and the recognize its unhistorical character. Inmen of his own day do not live in the deed the fruit of his labors might have luxury to which their ancestors were ac- been more spoiled by these tendencies customed. than it is, but for the vein of modesty which was one of the gentler elements in his rugged character. To attack he was impervious, but to the opinion of friends in whom he had complete confidence he was ready to give way with charming deference. On many points he adopted as his own the views of Dr. Virchow, of Mr. Sayce, of Mr. Mahaffy, of Sir Charles Newton. And he had the great good fortune to secure the aid of a man who joined to an enthusiastic temper not unlike his own a thorough training in architecture, and a genius for topographic research, Wilhelm Dörpfeld. Dr. Dörpfeld also is wanting in critical sobriety of judgment, but his training has been thorough if not wide; and it is to his collaboration that the great books of Schliemann, "Ilios," "Troja," "Mycenæ," "Tiryns," owe very much of their scientific value. an Some men seem to us great in themselves; other men seem to have done great things. In the case of Schliemann what he has done strikes us first; but when we come to consider it the deeds are little more than a corollary of the man's nature. Untiring in persistency, inflexible in resolve, with unbounded talent for action, he was one of those who must succeed if only they receive the gift of a worthy and attainable purpose. The purpose came to Schliemann in childhood; but if he had consulted one by one the great scholars and archæologists of Europe, they would probably one and all have declared his notions chimerical. He did not consult any one, learned or unlearned, but merely went his way, step by step. And when he began to attain great results they were at first greeted with contempt and cynicism. German archæology would make no account of an excavator who had not even a university degree. Greeks smiled at his madness and made him the subject of daily scandal. Some declared that he first bought and buried the antiquities which he afterwards found. It is a great satisfaction to me to record that the first country which did justice to Schliemann was England. In England there was a group of archæologists trained by facts and existing monuments rather than in the schools, who from the first grasped the meaning of the new discoveries. Of course no man who is of strongly moulded character sees all things alike in a white light. And when a man has in him the fibre of an original discoverer, he is in the nature of the case one-sided. Nobody supposes that Schliemann is the best judge of Schliemann's discoveries, or It is not easy for one who has known Henry Schliemann personally to cease speaking of him without adding a few words of more personal bearing. Among English and French savants smooth polished and sceptical, among German Gelehrten, each in his own little field omniscient and indifferent to all outside it, Schliemann moved as a being intensely real, full of imaginations and prejudices, of love and hatred. This strong color of personal feeling he infused into all his work; his discoveries were his children, and he was ready to fight for them as a lioness fights for her young. He regarded all criticisms of his views as libels and calumnies, and attacked them in the spirit of a theologian who has to combat an insidious heresy. Few who were present at the notable debate on Tiryns at Burlington House in 1886 will forget it. Mr. Stillman had declared his wish to lay before the Hellenic Society a statement of his reasons for believing that the palace at Tiryns was not of pre-historic date but belonged rather to the Byzantine age. It occurred to us that when his paper was read Schliemann might like to be present. We telegraphed to him at Athens, and he immediately replied that both himself and Dr. Dörpfeld would immediately set out for England. To so old a traveller the length of Europe seemed but a trifle. The meeting was held and Mr. Stillman's oppugnations read. The opening sentence of Schliemann's reply often recurs to me as an instance in which perfect simplicity could scarcely be distinguished from consummate skill. It was something like this: "When first, years ago, I saw at Tiryns the foundations on the Acropolis of the walls of a great palace, I too was disposed to see in it a work of the Byzantine age. I must beg this assembly to pardon me so great, so enormous a blunder." When Dr. Dörpfeld had added his exquisitely lucid exposition to Schliemann's vehement protestation, most of those present felt that the honors of the day rested with the Athenian visitors. And it was not long before the discovery at Mycena of the foundations of an early Greek temple, superimposed on those of the palace walls, put the Byzantine theory come to an end. The projected excava tions in Crete in search of the remains of the civilization which the Greeks connected with the names of Minos and Dædalus, the complete unravelling of the knotty problem of the successive cities at Hissarlik, the further investigation of the great Acropolis of Mycena are reserved for other hands. Even Madame Schliemann, for so long a partner in her husband's labors and successes, can take up but a small part of them. But it will always be said that it was to the perseverance, the faith, and the enthusiasm of Henry Schliemann that we owe the first great efforts to draw aside the veil which long ages ago had laid over the remains of the pre-historic age of Greece. And it will always be felt that his life is a proof that neither poverty nor engrossing worldly anxieties, nor want of early edu cation, need avail to shut out from any man who has learned or scientific ambition the prospect of being able to accomplish great things in the realm of knowledge, and to leave a name honored and memora ble to the piety of the commonwealth of learning. PERCY GARDNER. From Blackwood's Magazine. at least out of court. Mr. Penrose, who A LEARNED LADY: ELIZABETH CARTER. at the time was in favor of the later date, has now been entirely convinced; and among reasonable men there is now, I believe, little difference of opinion on the subject. There were some ways in which Schliemann, successful as he was in the modern world, seemed rather to belong to that which passed away before the advance of Christianity. Though he was a strong believer in providence, there was in him a certain amount of natural Teutonic heathenism. And this ancestral tendency somehow joined hands with the early Greek heathenism of Homer. With an idealizing power which showed how much of poetry lay beneath his rugged surface, he found in modern Greece some reflex of the days of Agamemnon and Achilles. In his Athenian house he managed to reconcile the superficial refinement of our century with something of the fashion of old Hellenic life. Those who there partook of his open-handed hospitality felt as if they were in a new Phæacian palace, while the tough old Ulysses at the head of the table told his stories or sketched the plan of his future works. Those works, alas, have "The things of which he most afraid is, Essays in Rhyme. So many of the notable names of the last century have been lately rescued from semi-oblivion, that it seems strange to those who recollect what a power in her day and generation was Elizabeth Carter of learned memory, to note that while perpetual tributes are being paid to Mrs. Opie, Mrs. Barbauld, Hannah More, and other women famous for their wit and wisdom, Elizabeth Carter, the scholar and linguist, remains comparatively unnoticed. To be sure, we have to look a little further back for the period at which this fair savante flourished, than we have for that which gave birth to those above mentioned, and their contemporaries. A bluestocking of blue-stockings, Mistress Carter lived, indeed, to behold the blue-stocking era, and to become an intimate friend of its foundress, Mrs. Montagu; but her day was far spent ere "Percy" drew crowded houses, and "Evelina " was the talk of the town. When Johnson was patting his little Hannah on the head, and bidding his "Fannikin "be a good girl, he was respectfully asserting of some celebrated scholar that he understood Greek better than any one he (Johnson) had ever known, "except Elizabeth Carter." Born in a time of considerable literary stagnation, at what was then a remote seaport in Kent; born also of parents only moderately rich; possessed of but few aspirations, and no connection with intellectual life of any kind, the mastery obtained by a young, discouraged girl over both ancient and modern languages, and the use to which she put this acquirement, at once evinced the inborn genius. Elizabeth's father was her instructor. Was that an advantage? Apparently not. The teacher was wearied out with the pupil's slowness, parents are not the best of pedagogues, and the Rev. Nicholas repeatedly urged and entreated his youthful daughter to give up the desire on which her heart was set. She yearned to become a scholar? But she would never be a scholar; she was not quick enough not bright enough; she forgot what he had taught her; the task was more than she could accomplish. Elizabeth smiled to herself, and took no heed of the pessimist. The result was that in the course of her life she became a proficient in Hebrew, Greek, Latin, French, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese languages! Even into the remoter realms of Arabic she occasionally wandered. We wonder whether, in after-years, the worthy Nicholas Carter recalled his early prognostications, or whether, as is the way of prognosticators, the perpetual curate of Deal forgot them at his convenience. Having been left motherless at the age of ten, the persevering little student found herself presently under the sway of a stepmother; but, from a literary point of view, this does not appear to have been any hardship, as it was in the case of Fanny Burney, and divers other aspirants to fame. The second Mrs. Carter was either too much engaged with her own young family to interfere with her scholarly step-daughter, or else she sympathized with her pursuits. At any rate, it is plain that Elizabeth was left to pursue her chosen routine unmolested; and when we find her, while still under the paternal roof, rising, walking, visiting, and retiring to rest exactly when she chose, with apparently no claims being made upon her time, and no calls upon her attention, we cannot but feel she enjoyed considerable privi leges, even before her rapidly acquired fame procured for her distinction and consideration as a personage of note. It is one thing to be celebrated abroad, it is another to be appreciated at home. Apparently Elizabeth Carter was both. She must have been a curious creature, this calm-spirited, long-headed, independent-minded young mortal. Not in the least like the by-way-of-being-clever-andoriginal miss of the present day. Elizabeth had no sort of desire to flee the home of her childhood and take up for herself some special line, which should be indicated by her dress, her associates, the very quarter wherein she pitched her tent. Miss Carter simply lived on at home; but she lived her own life, and made that life famous. She rose, we are told, between the hours of four and five (this was early rising, but not extravagantly early in those days); then, before breakfast, she writes to a friend, "I read two chapters of the Bible, and a sermon; then some Hebrew, Greek, and Latin;" after which she went for a walk. Breakfast over, the indefatigable linguist read some part of every language with which she was acquainted, in order never to allow herself to forget what had once been acquired. No wonder that poor "Punch" was daunted by the presence of such a living encyclopedia. This is what happened to "Punch": Miss Carter having been taken by some friends in Deal to see the old, old puppet-show (we must remember that "Punch was in full swing a hundred and fifty years ago!)- the entertainment, which was usually more jocose than delicate, was actually and unmistakably dull. "Why, Punch," says the showman, "what makes you so stupid to-day?" "I can't talk my own talk," Punch makes answer back; "the famous Miss Carter is here." But though Elizabeth rose early with a view to a riot among dead languages before the morning meal was spread, she could not be equally ascetic about going to bed, and indeed must have had rather a long day of it ere she retired at midnight, whilst she had even to be admonished by her amiable and accommodating parent to adhere to that hour. Why she should have required to bind a wet towel about her temples, and chew green tea and coffee-nay, take snuff, shocking as it is to tell the tale! - in order to keep herself awake when nature was crying aloud for sweet repose, one cannot conjecture. She had all the day to study in the whole long, quiet, undisturbed day; it does in deed seem a perversity that she should have presumed to thwart her drooping eyelids as the midnight hours approached. In respect to the taking of snuff, we are told that Mr. Carter disapproved of the practice, but that on seeing how much his daughter suffered beneath the deprivation, he withdrew his objection. By this time he had possibly come to perceive that genius has occasional whims and necessities to which the progenitor of genius does well to give way. Doubtless a stimulant of some kind was needed by the translator of "Epictetus," and after all, everybody took snuff more or less about the middle of the last century; jewelled snuff-boxes belonging to dames who had no excuse of severe mental strain, are to be met with in plenty among the heirlooms of to-day; wherefore who would grudge Elizabeth the pinch which produced the philosophic page? As far as household expenses went, it would not appear that those of Elizabeth Carter could have been very ruinous, since we are informed that "she kept no table in London, nor ever dined at home; but when she was so ill as to be unable to go out, the chairs or carriages of her friends always brought her to dinner, and carried her back at ten o'clock at latest;" so that it is plain the accomplished spinster loved society and was by it beloved in return, even to an extent almost incomprehensible to modern ideas. We can hardly conceive of a person being so ill as to be unable to stir abroad, who is yet ready and willing to undergo the fatigue of dining in company; being expected, moreover - as Miss Carter would doubtless be in her capacity of lioness to entertain and deThe translation of "Epictetus" was light the assembled guests. The probaMiss Carter's great work. It was pub- bility is that Elizabeth was a brilliant iished by subscription, and realized for its conversationalist, and that this being the translator the then extraordinary sum of case, she would have been less than a a thousand pounds, besides greatly extend-woman, could she have endured to hold ing her fame. Indeed the circumstance her tongue, even though it wagged with an of so difficult an author being rendered into English by a woman made a noise all over Europe; and even in Russia, where," as she observed, "they are just learning to walk upon their hind legs," an account of her appeared. effort. But London was not to usurp the learned lady altogether. She purchased a house in her native town of Deal; and her stepmother being dead, and the junior members of the family scattered, she took her father to live with her in this new home. "Each of them," says her biographer, "had their separate library and apartment, and they met but seldom except at meals; but they lived together with much comfort and affection, and had a very high opinion of each other;" so that the worthy gentleman must have amended his verdict on his daughter's abilities (as well as learned to endure her snuff) ere this. The book came out at a guinea, half of which was paid in advance and half on delivery of the volume. The price kept up so long that an amusing anecdote is told regarding it. Dr. Secker, the learned Archbishop of Canterbury, on one occasion sought Miss Carter, a bookseller's catalogue in his hands. "Here, madam," exclaimed the courtly divine, with affected indignation; "see how ill I am used by the world! Here are my sermons selling But the most lively and amusing porat half-price, while your Epictetus' is not tions of Elizabeth Carter's life must have to be had under eighteen shillings!" been her jaunts to fashionable resorts, "Epictetus" having opened to Eliza-watering-places, and the like, undertaken beth Carter the doors of society, the same work enabled her also to benefit by such admission. The sum she had received for her labors was a large one-a thousand pounds in 1758 meant more than double the money at the present timeand as she continued to write, and to obtain excellent terms for all she did, she was doubtless justified in setting up for herself a cosy little establishment in a fashionable quarter of the metropolis. Clarges Street, Piccadilly, was the spot decided upon; and in that historic nook in company with the brilliant and popular Mrs. Montagu, with whom she gradually grew to associate herself as a matter of course, whenever there was any excursion afoot. The two charming friends made their appearance at Spa, at Aix, at Bath, at Tunbridge Wells. From this latter place some of Miss Carter's most sprightly let ters were sent, the recipient being a certain Miss Talbot, niece of the lord chancellor. To Miss Talbot the pen could run at random; and in consequence, it is the Lord Lyttleton, another disputed conquest of Miss Carter's, was also merrily disposed of in the Tunbridge Wells correspondence. It would appear that the same " Lady A." had interfered in "my Lord L.'s" case also, and accordingly Miss Talbot is addressed thus: simple, natural, unaffected correspondent, | great state, and accompanied by chaplain, not the strong-minded woman of culture, doctor, and innumerable attendants. who frankly details all the little ins and outs of her daily life, all the chatter and gossip of the place, all the compliments paid her, and - observe this all her enjoyment of the same, in these delightful pages. One passage we must quote, it is so true to nature-to womanly nature; so piquant as coming from a student of Homer and Eschylus. The famous statesman, Lord Bath, is the theme. Lord Bath was a constant visitor and a faithful admirer, having taken a house close to Mrs. Montagu, with whom Elizabeth Carter was residing. Ask Lord Lyttleton's postilions, his horses, and his dog, whether he has not given them reason to wish there was nobody that detained his lordship longer than my Lady A.?... When one fine gentleman said to another fine gentleman upon the Pantiles, "She talks Greek faster than any other woman in England," pray was this meant for my Lady A.? walk left their pigs and their fowls to squall Or, when the market folks in the sidetheir hearts out, while they told each other, elsewhere. This is more than can be 66 'Sartinly she is the greatest schollard in the borne by one who valued the great noble-world," was the person they stared at and man for his own sake, it is true, but who directed their sticks at my Lady A. ? also enjoyed the éclat of having so distinguished a follower, with something, it must be owned, of plebeian zest. But Miss Talbot thinks, or feigns to think, that my lord is paying his devoirs Thus it will be seen that Elizabeth Carter not only received but enjoyed the plaudits of her kind. When these were missing she was half amused, possibly just a shade annoyed. A neighboring proprietor, with a show place, having declined to make an exception as regarded certain restrictions and prohibitions in favor of the notable dames-"It is barely possible," allows the famous lady, with some contempt beneath her smile, "that he may not have heard of our Lustricity at the Pantiles." Get into your favorite equipage [cries Miss Carter, the pen dashing along the page at lightning speed] and gallop down to Tunbridge Wells. Come, if it is only to confute by your eyes the scandalous report of your fine-laced intelligencer. It is true that my Lord B. does sometimes draw his chair in a sort-of-akind-of-edge-way fashion near my Lady A. But pray consider the difference. It is by mere dint of scratching and clawing that my Lady A. can draw my Lord B.-poor man! -a few plain steps across the Pantiles; while we, by the natural power of sober attraction, draw him quite up "Tug Hill" to the top of Mount Ephraim, and keep him there till we The book must have been but of trifling are afraid he will endanger his life in return-dimensions, for "it is not often," says ing. In 1738 appeared Elizabeth Carter's first volume of poems, of which some are written to friends, some are odes, and some are translations. her biographer, "that so inconsiderable a Then the pride of the writer's heart finds volume is ushered into the world in so yet further vent. I will ask a few plain questions [she proceeds]. Did my Lord B. ever take the very nosegay from his button-hole and deliver it into the hands of my Lady A.? Did my Lord B. ever go to a toy-shop, and purchase a knotting shuttle painted all over with Cupids and cages of fishes on a hook, and present it to my Lady A. ? etc., etc. Apparently the arguments being unanswerable, no more condolences on her supposed desertion in favor of another fair one were received by Miss Talbot's correspondent; and so complete, in fact, was the blue-stocking's triumph, that shortly after this episode the nobleman in question accompanied the ladies of Mount Ephraim on a foreign tour, travelling in respectable a manner," by which he doubtless alludes to the fact that all Miss Carter's three distinguished Tunbridge Wells friends are inserted somehow or other, by hook or by crook, into the pref |