In September 1913 some two hundred teachers of Latin assembled at Cambridge to study the Direct Method. There was much demonstration, experiment, and discussion: there was great enthusiasm. I best remember one thing. W. L. Paine had brought a class of about a dozen Whitgift boys who had one year's Latin behind them. I was interested in their keen enjoyment of the work, their eagerness to speak and answer. But what surprised me was their accuracy. A boy was called out at the end of the lesson to write up on the board the story which, mainly by question and answer, had been put before the class: he did it with almost no mistakes, and quite quickly. Any such blunder as the confusion of nominative and accusative had met, as the lesson proceeded, with a chorus of immediate correction: but I was still surprised at the final proof of a far higher degree of accuracy at that stage than I had ever seen or believed to be possible. This shows that Dr. Rouse was not a lone magician, of infinite resource and sagacity, who had invented an instrument which only he could use. The Whitgift boys were quite as good as the Perse boys. Paine was a scholar, but of nothing like Dr. Rouse's quality in scholarship. He was a well-qualified Latin master, who had taught on old lines at Oundle and found the whole business abominably dull. After experimenting with oral work in a less degree, he was encouraged at Whitgift to adopt the Direct Method: there he found himself.

To collect something or another, stamps, coins or butterflies, is a universal pastime, and it needs no explanation or excuse save the satisfaction which it brings. One may play the same game in another way, by collecting information; but the facts which one accumulates must be remote from one's duty and avocation. An old scholar taught me the game more than fifty years ago and I have never stopped playing it; it is such an easy and so engrossing a game. You choose some subject or other which takes your fancy; you buy a note-book and label it with the title of your theme; and you keep jotting down therein whatsoever bears upon the subject, as it comes your way, in all your reading, observation and reflection. I have had many such note-books, and some I have soon grown tired of; but others have lasted long and served me well. One of these is called De Ludis Antiquorum; it is grown old and shabby, for I played with it during many years. Your subject opens out wonderfully as time goes on; it tempts you into by-ways, it carries you afield; if you play the game aright it never comes to an end. It grows in interest continually, for things are interesting only in so far as they relate themselves to other things; only then can you put two and two together and tell stories about them. Such is science itself and such is all the knowledge that interests mankind.

There probably has never been a time when as much interest was shown in archaeology, and in excavation in particular, as at the present day. The thousands who yearly visit Housesteads, and the widespread popular outcry, echoed in the syndicated press, when Hadrian's Wall was threatened by quarrying operations, reflect the new spirit.

In 1763 the Clarendon Press at Oxford issued a Greek Testament printed from a fount newly cut for them by John Baskerville of Birmingham. It was the beginning of a new era in Greek typography in England. For the crabbed and curly abbreviations which perpetuated in print the obscurities of manuscript, following the sixteenth-century type of Robert Estienne, were substituted clearly formed letters pleasant to see and easy to read. Some abbreviations there still were, for the basis was still a written hand of not a century later than Estienne, but they were not obscure. Estienne, printer to the King, Francis I, had taken as his model the letters drawn for him by the King's scribe, a Cretan, Angelos Vergetios: Baskerville borrowed from the school library of Coventry a manuscript written by an English schoolmaster, Euclid's Harmonics copied by Philemon Holland, and ‘partly formed his characters from it’.

‘I never looke upon an author’, says Montaigne, ‘be they such as write of vertue and of actions, but I curiously endevour to find out what he was himselfe.… Plutarke's compositions, if they be well savored, do plainly manifest the same unto us: and I am perswaded I know him inwardly: yet would I be glad we had some memories of his owne life.’ What we know of the externals of Plutarch's life can in fact be put in a few sentences. Born shortly before the middle of the first century a.d., a member of an old Boeotian family in easy circumstances, he combined with the ordinary occupations of a country gentleman the profession of lecturing, though it is improbable that he charged any fees for his courses. His devotion to the municipal affairs of Chaeronea involved him in various missions, one of which took him to Rome while still a young man, in the principate of Vespasian. Here his days were occupied by lecturing and what he grandly calls ‘political business’, his evenings by dinner parties; so that he had no time, he tells us, to practise himself in the Roman tongue. In his youth he visited Alexandria also, perhaps for his studies; and we find him at Rome again under Domitian, perhaps collecting materials for the Roman biographies. But his later years were passed, so far as our knowledge goes, between Chaeronea, where he kept a sort of school for gentlemen's sons and held a succession of municipal offices, and Delphi, where he was a member of the priestly college. He married the daughter of a fellow citizen; begot five children (two of whom died in childhood); and himself lived to a ripe age. Practically the whole of this meagre curriculum vitae has been constructed out of scattered references in Plutarch's own writings. Almost the only piece of extraneous evidence is Suidas' statement that Trajan made him consul in his old age: this I have some difficulty in crediting, for there is no hint anywhere in his writings of his having held high office or of any personal relations which could explain Trajan's act—and Plutarch was hardly the man to leave his honours unmentioned. If he has told us little of the outward tenor of his life, I suspect that there was little to tell. He likens it himself to a well-written manuscript, wherein are few erasures.

The systematic excavation of the Outer Ceramicus, carried on in a series of campaigns under the direction of Dr. Alfred Brueckner, has thrown valuable light upon one of the most interesting portions of ancient Athens. There, lining the road which led from the Dipylon Gate to the Academy, lay the tombs of those who had given their lives in battle for Athens or had rendered to her some other signal service. Pausanias the traveller passed along that road, and he has left us a brief catalogue, interspersed with historical comments, of some of the monuments which flanked it (i. 29.3–16). Here were buried not only statesmen such as Cleisthenes, Ephialtes, and Pericles, public financiers such as Eubulus and Lycurgus, generals and admirals such as Phormio, Thrasybulus, Conon, Timotheus, and Chabrias, but also outstanding figures in the realm of thought and of art—Zeno, the founder, Chrysippus, the reorganizer, of the Stoic School, and Nicias, the foremost figure-painter of his day. Of the more striking achievements of the Hellenic world only literature and sculpture are unrepresented in Pausanias’ list.

The greatest contribution which Rome made to the history of the world is perhaps to be found in her government, in her solution of political problems, and in the machinery she devised to carry out the hundred and one duties that fall to the lot of executive powers. No one institution of Rome is so interesting and intriguing in its origin and development as the Senate, which from the early days of the Republic down to the foundation of the Empire played an enormous part in moulding the whole political life of Rome; and even when the golden days of senatorial authority were over, its name and tradition remained to exercise a great influence and fascination on succeeding times. When we read of the Senate and its part in Roman history we try to think of parallels in our own government, and the first thing that suggests itself to us is the Houses of Parliament and more particularly the House of Commons. But there are so many differences between the two that it is worth while briefly to describe the Senate and in so doing compare it with our own system.