tation," says Dr. Dörpfeld, "we may now draw on the ruins of the sixth city of Troy when we have to describe the buildings and culture of the age which Homer celebrates." As Dr. Dörpfeld shows in the same work, the descriptions, and very often the special language of Homer, exactly fit the houses of Trov, the circuit wall and its towers.

The infinite pains, skill, and labor by which these superimposed cities at Troy were distinguished can hardly be conceived by those who have not been there. The original strata were not. all perfectly level, and ran up and down so that the walls crossed each other. To distinguish the Mycenæan from the Roman walls let down into the same level is not difficult for the expert. Many of the Roman blocks, of which there were seventeen layers, were marked with letters, perhaps the stone mark of the contractor.

The identification of the Mycenæan period furnishes us a new basis for estimating the age of the sixth city and those below it. Putting the Roman Ilium at the beginning of the Christian era, we may date the sixth city anywhere from one thousand to fifteen hundred years before Christ; the fifth, fourth, and third cities may range from 1500 to 2000 B. C.; the second, from 2000 to 2500 B. C.; and the third from 2500 to 3000 B. C. But these are only relative and approximate dates; the primitive city might easily be a thousand years older.

I have spoken of the different layers of history as they were suggested on the Acropolis of Athens. But nowhere can one pass so rapidly from one age to another by slight changes of level as at Troy. As we mounted and descended through the different strata it seemed as if we were going up and down the ladders of time. How young seemed the Hellenic city, with its beautiful marble capitals and columns, compared with the primitive villages built on the basic rock below! One day, as we were digging in the third or fourth city, we came on several large jars or pithoi containing about a bushel of peas. They had been there probably four thousand years, and still preserved their form without their vitality. Some of these jars found at different levels were five feet or more in height. They were set in the ground, as shown in the illustration, and served to hold grain or wine. But in some cases the mice had gnawed through and devoured their contents.

No bricks were found in the Mycenæan period, and the 1 Introduction to " Mycenæan Age," by Tsountas and Manatt. Boston, 1897.

dressed stones are peculiar to Troy. I have lying before me, however, a piece of brick which came out of the second city. It was originally sun-dried, but it has passed through a terrible fire. The outer part, where it was in close contact with wood, has been melted till it is nothing but a cinder. What was the inner part still retains the semblance of clay, and is friable. Running through it you can see the marks and the mould of the straw laid into it; for it tells of a time when bricks were not made without straw. After the Boston fire one could find many evidences of the terrible heat, but no piece of brick just like this. When this brick was burned neither Chicago nor Boston was known or thought of; the Pilgrims had not landed at Plymouth; the United States was a far-off event; Columbus had not set sail for the new world; the art of printing was unknown; neither England nor France had a national existence; Mahomet was not born; Paris had not been made the seat of the Frankish monarchy; Italy had not been conquered by Theodoric; Jesus had not come, and the marvellous results of his life were undreamed of; Julius Cæsar, Pompey and Cicero, Darius, Plato, Socrates, Sophocles, and Eschylus were unborn. I have a few fragments of clear charcoal made from the beams set in the wall. It was just where these beams were that the fire raged hottest and the adjacent brick was almost melted. It seems remarkable that the delicate piece of straw laid in this brick should have imprinted on the clay the lines of the fibre of which it was composed. Think of a wisp of straw leaving its signature on a piece of brick made four thousand years ago! In a burnt wall at Troy, where a beam had lain, a knot in the wood was stamped in the clay.

The full results of the final excavations of Troy, which I shall always consider it a rare event in my life to have witnessed, will not be known, perhaps, until the sources and relations of its culture have been more fully established. While holding that the sixth city of Troy is contemporaneous with Tiryns and Mycenæ, and noting the influence of Mycenæan culture as seen in the vases (undoubtedly imported) of that period, Dr. Dörpfeld recognizes the difference between the culture of Troy and Mycena. The decoration of the former is distinctly simpler than that of the Argive palaces. It was left to Dr. A. Körte of Bonn to show that the predominant culture at Troy was Phrygian with points of contact with the Mycenæan.

When I went to Troy my chief fear was that some of the poetry of the Iliad might vanish in the ruins of Hissarlik. There are scenes which are beautiful in the glow of a sunset which are not beautiful in the glare of noon. I was not sure that the Homeric Ilios could stand so much publicity. And if my conception of it had been confined to that of the second city, I should have felt that the fact fell too far below the poem. But the uncovering of the Mycenæan city, with its great walls, towers, and battlements, strengthened the sense of reality. It might have been on just such a tower that Helen stood looking over the plain of Troy when she won from the Trojan elders the greatest compliment ever paid to the beauty of a woman. But in Troy, as in Ithaca, site and scene are but the warp and woof of which the immortal picture is woven. We need not press the correspondence too far between fact and fancy. Over mountains, islands, sea, and plain the poet has spread his canvas, and like a beautiful sunset in the Egean has suffused the scene with the bright glow of his imagination. And when the last stone of Troy shall have crumbled into dust, the unfading pictures of the immortal epic will remain. With Alpheus of Mytelene we can sing:

Ανδρομάχης ἔτι θρῆνον ἀκούομεν, εἰσέτι Τροίην
δερκόμεθ ̓ ἐκ βάθρων πᾶσαν ἐρειπομένην
καὶ μόθον Αιάντειον, ὑπὸ στεφάνη τε πόληος
ἔκδετον ἐξ ἵππων Έκτορα συρόμενον,
Μαιονίδεω διὰ Μοῦσαν, ὃν οὐ μία πατρὶς αἰοδὸν
κοσμεῖται, γαίης δ' ἀμφοτέρης κλίματα.

Still sad Andromache's low wail we hear;
Still see all Troy from her foundations fall:
The might of Ajax, lifeless Hector bound

And ruthless dragged beneath the city's wall-
This, through the muse of Homer, bard renowned,
Whose fame not one alone, but many shores revere.

MICHAEL JOSEPH BARRY.

BARRY, MICHAEL JOSEPH, Irish poet and patriot. He spent large part of his life in Cork, and was a frequent contributor to t "Nation." Comparatively little is known of his life, but his poe are still popular and serve in keeping up the flame of patrioti among his compatriots.

"T were sweet, indeed, to close our eyes,
With those we cherish near,
And, wafted upwards by their sighs,
Soar to some calmer sphere.
But whether on the scaffold high,
Or in the battle's van,

The fittest place where man can die
Is where he dies for man!

THE WEXFORD MASSACRE

1649.

THEY knelt around the Cross divine -
The matron and the maid;

They bowed before redemption's sign,
And fervently they prayed:

Three hundred fair and helpless ones,
Whose crime was this alone
Their valiant husbands, sires, and sons,
Had battled for their own.

Had battled bravely, but in vain -
The Saxon won the fight,
And Irish corses strewed the plain
Where Valor slept with Right.
And now that man of demon guilt
To fated Wexford flew -

The red blood reeking on his hilt,
Of hearts to Erin true!

He found them there

-the young, the old,

The maiden, and the wife:

Their guardians brave in death were cold,
Who dared for them the strife.

They prayed for mercy - God on high!
Before thy cross they prayed,

And ruthless Cromwell bade them die
To glut the Saxon blade!

Three hundred fell-the stifled prayer
Was quenched in woman's blood;
Nor youth nor age could move to spare
From slaughter's crimson flood.

But nations keep a stern account
Of deeds that tyrants do;

And guiltless blood to Heaven will mount,
And Heaven avenge it, too!