and had accomplished wonders; but was it not time to see whether an agreement was possible on some general principles? To take two provinces of classical learning in which this need had long been apparent—etymologies of a purely conjectural and sometimes absurd nature were often given to Greek or Latin words; and in textual criticism conjectures were often propounded, and even received, without any reference to the manuscripts, but simply because they struck the critic as good in themselves. Another defect in the treatment of classical antiquity had hitherto been the absence of any systematic attempt to bring the evidence of the literature into relation with the evidence of the monuments,—the buildings, statues, stones, vases, coins, inscriptions, and other relics of the civilisation to which the literature belonged.
Under the influence of such perceptions as these, new branches of special knowledge were gradually developed. Within the last half-century a science of language has been created by the application of the comparative method to linguistic study. The old haphazard etymologising has been banished for ever; derivations which satisfied Plato, and which could not have been disproved by Bentley, can now be refuted by every possessor of an elementary textbook. The study of manuscripts, as such, has become the science of palæography; and if any one desires to realise what arduous labour it has enlisted, it is enough to look at the well-known work of Gardthausen, published ten years ago, which is
