18 JULY 1896, Page 3

At the annual meeting of the British School of Athens

on Monday Mr. John Morley, who was needlessly apologetic in taking the chair, modestly said that be was not quite so destitute of the right to speak to an assembly of Greek scholars as the Louvain professor mentioned by Goldsmith, who told a vagabond scholar, with aspirations to make his living by teaching Greek, that he himself had never learned Greek and had never missed it, had obtained a doctor's cap and gown without Greek, ten thousand florins a year without Greek, and a good appetite equally without Greek. For his own part, said Mr. Morley, thanks to Oxford, he was not in so and a plight ; and he knew of no greater refreshment than reading the great masterpieces of Greek literature. He regretted much that Oxford and Cambridge, who had lost large revenues by the agricultural depression, could afford so little help to the British School of Athens, but be hoped that some African millionaire might endow the English research into Greek archwology. For nothing but some familiarity with the ancient art of the Greeks could really revive adequately the picture of the most beautiful aspects of Greek life. Unfor- tunately the great African millionaires are not usually the persons most likely to attach the true value to this stimu- lating side of archwological research.