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level of English education in regard to art of every kind. But special causes have favoured the diffusion of an interest in ancient art, and more particularly in that of Greece. Everywhere in the Hellenic lands the soil has been giving up its buried treasures, and revealing monuments hitherto unknown, or known only through books. Athens, Olympia, Mycenae, Delos, the Troad, Ephesus, Halicarnassus are only a few of the sites where pregnant discoveries have rewarded the spade. Increased facilities of travel have enabled thousands to become familiar with the scenes of Greek and Roman history, and so to follow with a keener interest the progress of such explorations, England, which had sent forth many of the earlier explorers, among whom Colonel Leake will always hold a place of honour, had for some time fallen behind other nations in such enterprise. Within the first half of this century, both France and Germany had established at Athens permanent centres for the promotion of research. It was not till 1883 that a British School of Archaeology was established there; but already it has done a considerable amount of good work; as, for instance, in its most recent undertaking, the excavations at Megalopolis in Arcadia. Again, the means of studying ancient art in this country have been enormously increased. The British Museum, which acquired the Elgin marbles in 1816, has throughout the century been receiving a series of invaluable additions, and was never before either so attractive or so highly organised as a place for the study of