The war so happily ended has added new names to the galaxy of naval worthies. New stars are in the firmament. The records indicate that your naval representatives have been faithful to the lesson of their traditions, that they have been true to their history, whilst the men of our Navy have shown that they have lost none of the skill and none of the tact that they have inherited. But they have proven again that a generation of men who are able to defend their title to the spurs they inherited are proper successors to their progenitors. [Applause.]
[Speech of Heinrich Schliemann at the annual banquet of the Royal Academy, London, May 5, 1877. Sir Gilbert Scott, the eminent architect, took the chair in the absence of Sir Frederick Grant, the President of the Academy. In introducing Dr. Schliemann, Sir Gilbert Scott spoke as follows: "There is one gentleman present among us this evening who has special claims upon an expression of our thanks. Antiquarian investigation is emphatically a subject of our own day. More has been discovered of the substantial vestiges of history in our own than probably in any previous age; and it only needs the mention of the names of Champollion, Layard, Rawlinson, and Lipsius to prove that we have in this age obtained a genuine knowledge of the history of art as practised in all previous ages. Not only have we obtained a correct understanding of the arts of our own race as exemplified in our own mediæval antiquities, but lost buildings of antiquity such as the Egyptian labyrinth, the palace of Nineveh, the mausoleum of Halicarnassus, the temple and statues of Olympia, and the temple of Diana at Ephesus have been re-discovered and disinterred. ["Hear! Hear!"] There remained, however, one great hiatus. We knew something of the more archaic periods of Greek art, and we knew that on the gate of Mycenæ there were evidences of an art far more archaic and apparently not allied with true Hellenic art, but we knew no more nor had an idea how the great gulf in art history was to be bridged over. It still remains a great gulf, but Dr. Schliemann by his excavations, first on the site of Troy and then of Mycenæ, has brought to open daylight what, without prejudging questions as yet _sub judice_, seem to be the veritable works of the heroes of the Iliad; and if he has not yet actually solved the mysteries which shroud that age, he has brought before us a perfect wealth of fact at the least calculated to sharpen our antiquarian appetite for more certain knowledge. Knowing that Dr. Schliemann is like one in old times, who, while longing to tell of the Atrides and of Cadmus, yet allowed the chords of his heart to vibrate to softer influences, I will, while proposing his health, conjoin with his name that of his energetic fellow-explorer, Madame Schliemann."]