of his excavations has been to rehabilitate the Philistines, the makers of the most artistic objects found in the debris of two thousand years.  Far more light, however, has been thrown on the religious customs and beliefs of the Jews by discoveries beyond their borders.  The notion firmly held by our fathers that Israel was one of the oldest of civilizations and formed a world by itself has vanished into thin air; for an older and vaster civilization has been discovered to which she owed not only her science but the larger part of her religion.  The dimension of the debt to Babylonia has been and continues to be fiercely argued by conservative and radical critics; but its recognition has sufficed to revolutionize the study of early Israel and to provide a new background for the religious history of the world.  The relation of the beliefs and practices of the Jews to those of other branches of the Semitic family was boldly explored by Robertson Smith, and has lately been illuminated by the epoch-making volumes of Sir James Frazer on the Folklore of the Old Testament.

The history of Greece, like the history of the Jews, presents a very different aspect to that which was offered to the readers of Grote, Thirlwall, and even Curtius.  Schliemann’s discoveries at Troy, Tiryns, and Mycenae unearthed Mycenaean civilization and gave an incalculable impetus to archaeological research; but the brilliant amateur was almost pathetically incompetent to interpret the treasures he had brought to light, and much of his work has had to be done again by Doerpfeld.  Despite the achievements of archaeology, however, the period before Solon remains very dark.  Barely second in importance to the discoveries of Schliemann was the Aristotelian treatise on the Constitution of Athens, which was given to the world in 1891 by Sir Frederick Kenyon and has been most authoritatively interpreted by Wilamowitz, the greatest of living Hellenists.  With the growing mass of new literary material, inscriptions, coins, and papyri, the exploration of sites, the recovery of innumerable objects of art and fresh light streaming from Asia Minor and Crete, new attempts to write the history of Greece have been made.  Professor Bury’s narrative, at once scientific and popular, has summarized for English readers the assured results of research; but the most authoritative survey is that contained in the Greek volumes of Eduard Meyer’s vast survey of antiquity.  ’For the great tasks of history’, he writes, ’salvation is only to be found when it becomes conscious of its universal character, in ancient as well as in modern times.  Only by treating Greece in connection with the Mediterranean peoples can its real nature be seized.’  This colossal task, which proved beyond the strength of Duncker, has been performed by the Berlin Professor, the only scholar of our time who could have accomplished it single-handed.  The dazzling picture of Athenian democracy painted by Grote has faded away; and Beloch, following in the footsteps of Droysen, dwells with greater satisfaction on the diffusion of Greek influence through the conquests of Alexander.