Byronic; for it is full of the Haroldian spirit of youth, -never more so than when its writer, at that stage where a man feels older than he ever again will feel until reaching his grand climacteric, breaks forth with Heart of my heart, I am no longer young!" He revels, besides, like the Georgian pilgrim, in the sense of freedom, as he goes oversea to test the further world. "The Garden of Years" is a love poem; but its emotion is a warm under-color, toning a novice's pictures of travel during his wander-year. Technically, the poem is cast in an original stanzaic form, effectively maintained from beginning to end.

This prelude is not a criticism, but a tribute of affection and remembrance. Readers who care for poetry will at once observe that a certain lyrical eloquence is a general characteristic of "The Garden of Years" and the ensuing shorter pieces, charged with a passion for Nature and a spirit of intense sympathy with their author's fellow-men. Equally manifest is his versatility, shown by the exultant tone of the hymn of rehabilitation, Gloria Mundi," the tenderness of “At Twilight," and the light touch of "The Débutante,”

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-a range even more striking when contrasted with the whimsical drollery of his published volumes of humorous verse. He did right in grouping together the five ballads that follow the title-poem; and in so doing emphasized not only their strength, but the patriotism which was one of his most attractive traits. Proud of his country's victories, American to the core, he is nowhere more impulsive than in the fine lyric, "When the Great Gray Ships Come in," which sings

of peace rather than of war. It expresses, no less, his passion for the sea and his comprehension of it. Like that older bard of our Eastern Coast, he had the key to ocean's book of mystery; he loved its tides and eddies, the shells and flotsam along its shores, its laughter and mist and surge. The ships upon its bosom, the derelicts that never reached their "Haven-Mother," charmed his imagination. Finally, one may note how, throughout his swift and crowded experience, his sense of reverence was never dulled. The lines entitled "The Winds and the Sea Obey Him" came from no frivolous heart. As he looked out upon the waters, he was moved to write that "amid a vexing multitude of creeds" his faith abided still. "The Spirit of MidOcean"-at once his valediction and a vivid token of his birthright as a poet-closes with unaffected homage to the Source whence inspiration flows to every soul to each according to his degree and need:

Hush! If this be the servant, what must the Master be?

IN

XIX

TREASURE TOMBS AT MYKENÆ1

N the following article I endeavor to give a statement of the significance, from a literary point of view, of the remarkable discoveries thus far made by Dr. Schliemann in his explorations at the site of Mykenæ. In order to do this we must recur to the epics of Homer and the majestic drama of the Attic tragedians to the poetry of a race which has furnished the most exquisite models of all succeeding

verse.

Children, reading translations of Homer with delight, yield by instinct to the charm of his matchless beauty and simplicity. They no more question his narrative than they doubt the histories of Cæsar and Napoleon, the voyages of Dampier, or the tales of the Conquistadores. But the most of us, when once past the age of faith in fairy-land and fable, have classed the songs of the wrath and valor of Achilles, the wit and wanderings of Odysseus, and the woes of the house of Atreus, among the more doubtful legends belonging to the youth of the world. The theories of Heyne, Wolf, and their pupils, which made the Homeric poems a growth or collection, rather than a personal composition, have caused us almost to distrust the in1 New York Daily Tribune, January 13, 1877.

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dividuality of Homer himself. The best scholars have become reluctant to give any credence to the historical import of the Iliad and Odyssey, and indeed of the glorious procession of the Athenian masterpieces, whose themes were largely taken from the episodes and traditions gathered in the measures of the blind Ionian bard. The geography and narrative of Herodotos were long under a similar cloud. The known absurdities gravely interspersed throughout his history stamped him as a marvel-monger, and served to vitiate the entire record of the Pierian books.

But in our own time a change has marked the opinion of the critical world. The exact research of modern travellers and geographers has proved that Herodotos, while overcredulous in minor and hearsay matters, was correct in essentials, even to the general topography and ethnology of the remote portions of Central Africa. And as for Homer, we begin to see in his poems a single creation, rather than a growth, and again to conceive of his simple and poetic individuality,—a blind, gray-bearded, heaven-endowed minstrel, wandering from Smyrna to Greece, and there from province to province, idealizing the history of his heroic period and race, and, either by oral or scriptural methods, fastening his ballad-epics upon time itself, so that, handed down from sire to son, they became the enduring treasure of all generations of mankind. We begin to feel-making allowance for the supernaturalism of an age when nothing was known of the earth itself, beyond the pillars of Herakles on the West and the Ganges on the East-when the gods were

thought to be the progenitors and companions of men -allowing for this we not only begin to feel that the Iliad and Odyssey are true to the physical status of the Mediterranean islands and shores, but we more than suspect that their stories of wars and warriors, of voyages, sieges, and of civil and domestic life, are the narratives of actual matters which were of the highest relative importance in a half-barbaric age; lastly, we look backward to find that Homer's personages were living, loving, warring, human beings, and that, while yet scarcely having left the flesh, their deeds and sayings, by turns wise and paltry, joyous and tragical, were the most exciting themes of the minstrel of that ancient time.

One of The Tribune's writers has well said that it is indeed a most fortunate thing that this man of our time has believed in Homer; that Dr. Schliemann was so impressed in youth with faith in the reality of the actions and manners depicted in the Ionic verse as to acquire a fortune with purpose to become an explorer, and to prove by his own exertions the general historic truth of the Iliad and Odyssey. There has been much dispute over his achievements in the Troad. The spot selected, after preliminary experiments elsewhere, for his serious efforts to uncover the ruins of Troia, was chosen against the judgment of many scholars. The unearthed relics, although marked with the sun-emblem which might typify the name of Ilios, were not of such a character as at once to remove all scepticism from European archæologists. Even in his own country his reports were