Be the explanation what it may, the fact is indisputable that archæology is patronised by those who know not its real meaning. A man has no more right to think of the people of old as dust and dead bones than he has to think of his contemporaries as lumps of meat. The true archæologist does not take pleasure in skeletons as skeletons, for his whole effort is to cover them decently with flesh and skin once more, and to put some thoughts back into the empty skulls. He sets himself to hide again the things which he would not intentionally lay bare. Nor does he delight in ruined buildings: rather he deplores that they are ruined. Coleridge wrote like the true archæologist when he composed that most magical poem "Khubla Khan"—
| "In Xanadu did Khubla Khan |
| A stately pleasure-dome decree: |
| Where Alph, the sacred river, ran |
| Through caverns measureless to man |
| Down to a sunless sea." |
And those who would have the pleasure-domes of the gorgeous Past reconstructed for them must turn to the archæologist; those who would see the damsel with the dulcimer in the gardens of Xanadu must ask of him the secret, and of none other. It is true that, before he can refashion the dome or the damsel, he will have to grub his way through old refuse heaps till he shall lay bare the ruins of the walls and expose the bones of the lady. But this is the "dirty work"; and the mistake which is made lies here: that this preliminary dirty work is confused with the final clean result. An artist will sometimes build up his picture of Venus from a skeleton bought from an old Jew round the corner; and the smooth white paper which he uses will have been made from putrid rags and bones. Amongst painters themselves these facts are not hidden, but by the public they are most carefully obscured. In the case of archæology, however, the tedious details of construction are so placed in the foreground that the final picture is hardly noticed at all. As well might one go to Rheims to see men fly, and be shown nothing else but screws and nuts, steel rods and cog-wheels. Originally the fault, perhaps, lay with the archæologist; now it lies both with him and with the public. The public has learnt to ask to be shown the works, and the archæologist is often so proud of them that he forgets to mention the purpose of the machine.
A Roman statue of bronze, let us suppose, is discovered in the Thames valley. It is so corroded and eaten away that only an expert could recognise that it represents a reclining goddess. In this condition it is placed in the museum, and a photograph of it is published in 'The Graphic.' Those who come to look at it in its glass case think it is a bunch of grapes, or possibly a monkey: those who see its photograph say that it is more probably an irregular catapult-stone or a fish in convulsions.
The archæologist alone holds its secret, and only he can see it as it was. He alone can know the mind of the artist who made it, or interpret the full meaning of the conception. It might have been expected, then, that the public would demand, and the archæologist delightedly furnish, a model of the figure as near to the original as possible; or, failing that, a restoration in drawing, or even a worded description of its original beauty. But no: the public, if it wants anything, wants to see the shapeless object in all its corrosion; and the archæologist forgets that it is blind to aught else but that corrosion. One of the main duties of the archæologist is thus lost sight of: his duty as Interpreter and Remembrancer of the Past.
All the riches of olden times, all the majesty, all the power, are the inheritance of the present day; and the archæologist is the recorder of this fortune. He must deal in dead bones only so far as the keeper of a financial fortune must deal in dry documents. Behind those documents glitters the gold, and behind those bones shines the wonder of the things that were. And when an object once beautiful has by age become unsightly, one might suppose that he would wish to show it to none save his colleagues or the reasonably curious layman. When a man makes the statement that his grandmother, now in her ninety-ninth year, was once a beautiful woman, he does not go and find her to prove his words and bring her tottering into the room: he shows a picture of her as she was; or, if he cannot find one, he describes what good evidence tells him was her probable appearance. In allowing his controlled and sober imagination thus to perform its natural functions, though it would never do to tell his grandmother so, he becomes an archæologist, a remembrancer of the Past.
In the case of archæology, however, the public does not permit itself so to be convinced. In the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford excellent facsimile electrotypes of early Greek weapons are exhibited; and these have far more value in bringing the Past before us than the actual weapons of that period, corroded and broken, would have. But the visitor says, "These are shams," and passes on.
It will be seen, then, that the business of archæology is often misunderstood both by archæologists and by the public; and that there is really no reason to believe, with Thomas Earle, that the real antiquarian loves a thing the better for that it is rotten and stinketh. That the impression has gone about is his own fault, for he has exposed too much to view the mechanism of his work; but it is also the fault of the public for not asking of him a picture of things as they were.
Man is by nature a creature of the present. It is only by an effort that he can consider the future, it is often quite impossible for him to give any heed at all to the Past. The days of old are so blurred and remote that it seems right to him that any relic from them should, by the maltreatment of Time, be unrecognisable. The finding of an old sword, half-eaten by rust, will only please him in so far as it shows him once more by its sad condition the great gap between those days and these, and convinces him again of the sole importance of the present. The archæologist, he will tell you, is a fool if he expects him to be interested in a wretched old bit of scrap-iron. He is right. It would be as rash to suppose that he would find interest in an ancient sword in its rusted condition as it would be to expect the spectator at Rheims to find fascination in the nuts and screws. The true archæologist would hide that corroded weapon in his workshop, where his fellow-workers alone could see it. For he recognises that it is only the sword which is as good as new that impresses the public; it is only the Present that counts. That is the real reason why he is an archæologist. He has turned to the Past because he is in love with the Present. He, more than any man, worships at the altar of the goddess of To-day; and he is so desirous of extending her dominion that he has adventured, like a crusader, into the lands of the Past in order to subject them to her. Adoring the Now, he would resent the publicity of anything which so obviously suggested the Then as a rust-eaten old blade. His whole business is to hide the gap between Yesterday and To-day; and, unless a man is initiate, he would have him either see the perfect sword as it was when it sought the foeman's bowels, or see nothing. The Present is too small for him; and it is therefore that he calls so insistently to the Past to come forth from the darkness to augment it. The ordinary man lives in the Present, and he will tell one that the archæologist lives in the Past. This is not so. The layman, in the manner of the Little Englander, lives in a small and confined Present; but the archæologist, like a true Imperialist, ranges through all time, and calls it not the Past but the Greater Present.
The archæologist is not, or ought not to be, lacking in vivacity. One might say that he is so sensible to the charms of society that, finding his companions too few in number, he has drawn the olden times to him to search them for jovial men and agreeable women. It might be added that he has so laughed at jest and joke that, fearing lest the funds of humour run dry, he has gathered the laughter of all the years to his enrichment. Certainly he has so delighted in noble adventure and stirring action that he finds his newspaper insufficient to his needs, and fetches to his aid the tales of old heroes. In fact, the archæologist is so enamoured of life that he would raise all the dead from their graves. He will not have it that the men of old are dust: he would bring them to him to share with him the sunlight which he finds so precious. He is so much an enemy of Death and Decay that he would rob them of their harvest; and, for every life the foe has claimed, he would raise up, if he could, a memory that would continue to live.