fragrance, of the atmosphere of antiquity; we forget that passionate emotion which instinctively drove our meditation and enjoyment back to the Greeks.  From this point onwards we must take notice of a clearly determined and very surprising antagonism which philology has great cause to regret.  From the circles upon whose help we must place the most implicit reliance—­the artistic friends of antiquity, the warm supporters of Hellenic beauty and noble simplicity—­we hear harsh voices crying out that it is precisely the philologists themselves who are the real opponents and destroyers of the ideals of antiquity.  Schiller upbraided the philologists with having scattered Homer’s laurel crown to the winds.  It was none other than Goethe who, in early life a supporter of Wolf’s theories regarding Homer, recanted in the verses—­

     With subtle wit you took away
       Our former adoration: 
     The Iliad, you may us say,
       Was mere conglomeration. 
     Think it not crime in any way: 
       Youth’s fervent adoration
     Leads us to know the verity,
       And feel the poet’s unity.

The reason of this want of piety and reverence must lie deeper; and many are in doubt as to whether philologists are lacking in artistic capacity and impressions, so that they are unable to do justice to the ideal, or whether the spirit of negation has become a destructive and iconoclastic principle of theirs.  When, however, even the friends of antiquity, possessed of such doubts and hesitations, point to our present classical philology as something questionable, what influence may we not ascribe to the outbursts of the “realists” and the claptrap of the heroes of the passing hour?  To answer the latter on this occasion, especially when we consider the nature of the present assembly, would be highly injudicious; at any rate, if I do not wish to meet with the fate of that sophist who, when in Sparta, publicly undertook to praise and defend Herakles, when he was interrupted with the query:  “But who then has found fault with him?” I cannot help thinking, however, that some of these scruples are still sounding in the ears of not a few in this gathering; for they may still be frequently heard from the lips of noble and artistically gifted men—­as even an upright philologist must feel them, and feel them most painfully, at moments when his spirits are downcast.  For the single individual there is no deliverance from the dissensions referred to; but what we contend and inscribe on our banner is the fact that classical philology, as a whole, has nothing whatsoever to do with the quarrels and bickerings of its individual disciples.  The entire scientific and artistic movement of this peculiar centaur is bent, though with cyclopic slowness, upon bridging over the gulf between the ideal antiquity—­which is perhaps only the magnificent blossoming of the Teutonic longing for the south—­and the real antiquity; and thus classical philology pursues only