More Books of the Week
(Continued from page 580.)
Two American writers, Professor R. V. D. Magaflin and Miss Emily C. Davis, have made an attractive and popular book. on The Romance of Archaeology, in which they skint lightly over the-many fields of research and bring together a great number of interesting illustrations (Bell, 18s.). We are not sure that those whom they wish to convert from the belief that archaeology is " the unnecessary and fatuous excavation of the broken remnants of a bygone and therefore superseded antiquity" will not derive exaggerated notions from their photographs of fine works of art. The working archaeologist knows that such things are exceptional and that dull stones and potsherds form the bulk of his material finds. Still, the volume is readable and should arouse fresh interest in the study of the past. It is a pity that, in the select list of museums, the British Museum is said to have been founded by Charles I, instead of by George Parliament ; moreover, the Lansdowne marbles were dispersed last spring from Lansdowne House.
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