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GENIUS AND OTHER ESSAYS received with criticism. Worn down by fever contracted on the banks of the Simois and Scamander, and hindered by the distrust of the Turkish authorities, he transferred the scene of his operations to Greece. Here Curtius has been achieving wonders at Olympia, and restoring to light the buried temples and effigies of all Olympos' hierarchy. But the disciple of Homer has undertaken labors that make the field of Olympian researches seem comparatively modern, and now startles the reading world with the progress of his work at Mykenæ—a city destroyed by the Argives in the century after the erection of Olympia's first temple—a city whose king was the most powerful chieftain in Greece at the time when, with the collected Grecian fleet and more than a hundred thousand warriors, he sailed from Aulis to recover Helena and demolish the "lofty walls of Troy."

Among our own experts, Bayard Taylor, the traveller, poet, and Hellenist, was one who fully and heartily declared his belief that Dr. Schliemann had discovered the true site of Ilion. His essay, which first appeared in The Tribune, was the most complete and pronounced of all the tributes awarded to the discoverer, and greatly encouraged him to continue in his chosen career.

No coldness, in America at least, attended the reception of the news from Mykenæ which reached us on the l0th of December. The Herald of that Sunday contained a telegraphic report of Schliemann's dispatch to the King of Greece, dated November 28, and I think that the heart of each lover of learning, [228]