devoted exclusively to Greek palæography. Textual criticism, aided, in some respects, by scientific palæography, and in others by the progress of linguistic research, has lost very much of the vague and arbitrary character which belonged to it in old days. The degree in which it has now approximated to the condition of a science may be seen, for example, in the chapter on "Methods of Textual Criticism," in Drs Westcott and Hort's "Introduction to the New Testament." Again, the systematic study of inscriptions has opened up a vast field, which has demanded, and still demands, the best work of many minds; and this new science of epigraphy has shed abundant light on every other department of antiquarian study. It is enough to allude to a single example—Mommsen's "History of Rome." But a passing notice is also due to the fact that, in the case of classical Greek, the body of evidence which has now been collected from Attic inscriptions is so large that it enables us to correct spellings of Greek words which have hitherto been taken on the faith of our relatively late manuscripts. Meisterhans, in his "Grammar of Attic Inscriptions," has lately presented this evidence in a compact and lucid form. As to the study of monuments, whatever their form or their material—monuments of art or of handicraft,—this vast domain has now so many provinces, and each province has been so laboriously cultivated, that to be an expert of first-rate authority in any one of them requires not only natural gifts, but the devotion of a lifetime. Excavations in the classical lands are from time to time revealing objects
