Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 132.djvu/644

 the proscenium of the Great Theatre, and fragments of the temple may still be seen in the piers of the aqueduct, which was certainly built in the Byzantine times.

As soon as Christianity got a permanent ascendency at Ephesus, the destruction of the sculptures with the sledge-hammer and the limekiln would be carried on continuously as a labor of love; and as soon as the site was sufficiently cleared of ruins to admit of a church being built on it, this was done, by following, as we have shown, the lines of the cella walls. This church in its turn was destroyed by the barbarous invaders of Christian Ephesus. At length when the mighty mass of ruins of the temple had been reduced to the scanty remnants found by Mr. Wood, the Cayster and its tributaries, which once, flowing in well-embanked channels, skirted the sacred precinct of Diana, covered up the wreck of the temple with a thick mantle of alluvial deposit. Here, as at Olympia, the ancient river god has done good service to archaeology by concealing what the spoiler has spared till a fitting time for its resurrection.

And now we take our leave of Mr. Wood and his discoveries, commending his book, and above all his plan of Ephesus, to the study of all future travellers. If, transporting ourselves in thought to the jagged ridge of Peion, we look down on the ancient city with the key to its topography which we have now obtained, what a host of historical associations crowd upon our memories! In that harbor at our feet, now a reedy swamp, rode the victorious triremes of Lysander; in that agora hard by Agesilaus exposed the white effeminate bodies of his Persian captives to the scornful gaze of his hardy, much-enduring veterans. In that theatre, now so silent, once resounded the shouts of the tumultuous multitude who condemned St. Paul, and half a century later the acclamations of the popular assembly who rewarded the piety of Salutaris with the highest honors the city could bestow. And now let us pass out of the theatre and follow the solemn procession on its return from the assembly to the temple; and, passing through the Coressian Gate along the paved road, lined on each side with the tombs of Ephesian dignitaries, we approach that sacred precinct where the Amazons dwelt in the pre-historic age, where the army of Alexander, fresh from its first victory over the Persians, marched in battle array past the temple of the great goddess of Asia, and where from time immemorial fugitives I sought shelter in the hospitable sanctuary of Artemis.

When we think how much history has gained by the exploration, partial and inadequate as it has been, of the ruins of Ephesus; when we review the marvellous discoveries which have recently taken place in Cyprus and the Troad, and which are actually now going on at Olympia and Mycenæ, we feel bound to ask the question, why, in a generation distinguished beyond all previous generations for historical research, for wealth, leisure, and facilities for travelling, so little has been done for the investigation of the sites of ancient cities? The explorers of Greece and Turkey half a century ago had neither steam to convey them to distant coasts, nor the practical knowledge of archæology which we now possess to guide their researches, nor photographers to record their discoveries, nor an electric telegraph wherewith to maintain communication with a distant base of operations. We, with all these appliances, and with boundless wealth at the command of individuals, if not of governments, grudge to these great enterprises the money which is daily wasted on trivial and ignoble objects. Why has England no Schliemanns?

 

 From The Pall Mall Gazette.

the last article written by M. Chapus before his death the fashionable chronicler of Le Sport traces the changes which have taken place in French costume since the last of the Valois, of whom M. Chapus says: "He (Henri III.) corrupted the morals of his period, as his sister Marguerite de Valois did the fashions." M. Chapus says that, though she had an abundance of beautiful black hair, she had a great fondness, like ladies of a more modern time, for golden locks, and wore wigs of her favorite color. She selected as pages only those lads who had hair of this color, and did not scruple to have it cut off when she wanted a new perruque. She wore a number of gold chains twisted into the hair and several more around her neck; and in this, as in other fashions, her example was generally followed by the ladies of the nobility and of the bourgeoisie. Among these customs, most of them involving considerable expense, were those of wearing perfumed gloves 