In a very few cases the Editor has ventured to correct what seemed to him positive errors.[3] He has not deemed it any part of his duty to discuss the Author’s opinions or to review his conclusions. He has, however, taken such opportunities as suggested themselves, to set Dr. Schliemann’s statements in a clearer light by a few illustrative annotations. Among the rest, the chief passages cited from Homer are quoted in full, with Lord Derby’s translation, and others have been added (out of many more which have been noted), as suggesting remarkable coincidences with the objects found by Dr. Schliemann.

From the manner in which the work was composed, and the great importance attached by Dr. Schliemann to some leading points of his argument, it was inevitable that there should be some repetitions, both in the Memoirs themselves, and between them and the Introduction. These the Editor has rather endeavoured to abridge than completely to remove. To have expunged them from the Memoirs would have deprived these of much of the interest resulting from the discussions which arose out of the discoveries in their first freshness; to have omitted them from the Introduction would have marred the completeness of the Author’s summary of his results. The few repetitions left standing are a fair measure of the importance which the Author assigns to the points thus insisted on. A very few passages have been omitted for reasons that would be evident on a reference to the original; but none of these omissions affect a single point in Dr. Schliemann’s discoveries.

The measures, which Dr. Schliemann gives with the minutest care throughout his work, have been preserved and converted from the French metric standard into English measures. This has been done with great care, though in such constant conversion some errors must of course have crept in; and approximate numbers have often been given to avoid the awkwardness of fractions, where minute accuracy seemed needless. In many cases both the French and English measures are given, not only because Dr. Schliemann gives both (as he often does), but for another sufficient reason. A chief key to the significance of the discoveries is found in the depths of the successive strata of remains, which are exhibited in the form of a diagram on page 10. The numbers which express these in Meters[4] are so constantly used by Dr. Schliemann, and are so much simpler than the English equivalents, that they have been kept as a sort of “memory key” to the strata of remains. For the like reason, and for simplicity-sake, the depths appended to the Illustrations are given in meters only. The Table of French and English Measures on page 56 will enable the reader to check our conversions and to make his own. The Editor has added an Appendix, explaining briefly the present state of the deeply interesting question concerning the Inscriptions which have been traced on some of the objects found by Dr. Schliemann.

With these explanations the Editor might be content to leave the work to the judgment of scholars and of the great body of educated persons, who have happily been brought up in the knowledge and love of Homer’s glorious poetry, “the tale of Troy divine,” and of

Long may it be before such training is denied to the imagination of the young, whether on the low utilitarian ground, or on the more specious and dangerous plea of making it the select possession of the few who can acquire it “thoroughly":

To attempt a discussion of the results of Dr. Schliemann’s discoveries would be alike beyond the province of an Editor, and premature in the present state of the investigation. The criticisms called forth both in England and on the Continent, during the one year that has elapsed since the publication of the work, are an earnest of the more than ten years’ duration of that new War of Troy for which it has given the signal. The English reader may obtain some idea of the points that have been brought under discussion by turning over the file of the “Academy” for the year, not to speak of many reviews of Schliemann’s work in other periodicals and papers. Without plunging into these varied discussions, it may be well to indicate briefly certain points that have been established, some lines of research that have been opened, and some false issues that need to be avoided.

First of all, the integrity of Dr. Schliemann in the whole matter—of which his self-sacrificing spirit might surely have been a sufficient pledge—and the genuineness of his discoveries, are beyond all suspicion. We have, indeed, never seen them called in question, except in what appears to be an effusion of spite from a Greek, who seems to envy a German his discoveries on the Greek ground which Greeks have neglected for fifteen centuries.[5] In addition to the consent of scholars, the genuineness and high antiquity of the objects in Dr. Schliemann’s collection have been specially attested by so competent a judge as Mr. Charles Newton, of the British Museum, who went to Athens for the express purpose of examining them.[6] A letter by Mr. Frank Calvert, who is so honourably mentioned in the work, deserves special notice for the implied testimony which it bears to Dr. Schliemann’s good faith, while strongly criticising some of his statements.[7]

Among the false issues raised in the discussion, one most to be avoided is the making the value of Dr. Schliemann’s discoveries dependent on the question of the site of Troy as determined by the data furnished by the Iliad. The position is common to Schliemann and his adverse critics, that Homer never saw the city of whose fate he sang;—because, says Schliemann, it had long been buried beneath its own ashes and the cities, or the ruins of the cities, built above it;—because, say the objectors, Homer created a Troy of his own imagination. The former existence and site of Troy were known to Homer—says Schliemann—by the unbroken tradition belonging to the spot where the Greek colonists founded the city which they called by the same name as, and believed to be the true successor of, the Homeric Ilium. Of this, it is replied, we know nothing, and we have no other guide to Homer’s Troy save the data of the Iliad. Be it so; and if those data really point to Hissarlik—as was the universal