coveries indicate that the upper room in such a case was generally used as a sanctuary, nor is the evidence lacking here. Adjoining this hall was a room, 12 feet by 14 feet, which had been used as a sacristy. When its floor collapsed its precious contents sank into the basement below, described in the excavation reports as the Room of the Stone Vases." The treasure comprised a series of libation vessels carved in costly stones, marble, alabaster, breccia; and one vessel with a long spout modelled in bluishgreen faience, clearly copied from a metal original such as was recently found at Byblos in Phoenicia. The stone vessels take many forms: heads of a lion and a lioness, a triton shell, delicately fluted cones originally copied from a bull's horn, and oval flasks, the evolution of which can be traced through intermediate forms back to an ostrich-egg bottle such as is still made by tribes in the central Sudan; the author figures an ostrich-egg vessel with blue marble mouth-piece, found in an Eleventh or Twelfth Dynasty grave at Abydos. Actual ostrich-eggs, once richly mounted, have been found in royal graves at Mycenæ, and quite recently by the Swedish expedition, at Dendra, in Argolis. Like the bull's head rhyton, described above, the marble lioness had inlay of red jasper in eye socket and nozzle; the eye was no doubt completed in the same way as the bull's, with a crystal lens. These libation vessels in the form of a lion or lioness's head recall the lions often represented as companions of the Minoan deities.

It is well-known that part of a head similar in material and treatment was found beneath the Temple of Apollo, at Delphi, along with an ordinary conical rhyton—a striking commentary on the tradition embodied in the Homeric Hymn to Apollo, that his worship was brought to Delphi from Knossos. In Apollo Delphinios, the chief god of classical Knossos, Evans recognises the youthful male god associated with the supreme goddess on Minoan engraved gems and signet rings, while he believes that the goddess herself, in her aspect as huntress and ruler of the sea, continued to be worshipped as Diktynna or Britomartis, whom the Greeks identified with Artemis or at times with one of her nymphs. As goddess of motherhood and fertility she was Rhea at Knossos, Hera at Argos, Aphrodite at Paphos, Demeter at Eleusis-old seats of Minoan worship.

Scholars throughout the world have done homage to the intuition that chose and secured this site for investigation, and

the faith that has led Sir Arthur Evans to devote to it much of his life and fortune. His work, begun with the new century, has set a new standard in the technique of excavation, the repairing and conserving of finds, and-most necessary in a building of several storeys the replacement of perished timbers and the reconstruction of architectural features, such as stairways and pillared halls; areas that would suffer by exposure have been roofed, wall paintings removed to the Candia Museum are replaced by copies. Few scientific undertakings have been so entirely conceived, directed and interpreted by a single mind. To say this is not to overlook the essential services of Sir Arthur's able adjutant, Dr. Duncan Mackenzie, now the resident curator of Knossos, or the group of architects, Mr. Theodore Fyfe, Mr. C. T. Doll, Mr. P. de Jong and the late Mr. F. G. Newton, who have contributed accurate records of things found and brilliant reconstructions of things inferred.

The first volume has stood the test of time. It established a system of chronology and nomenclature which classified prehistoric studies in the whole East Mediterranean area. The second amplifies and confirms that system, in which so many recent discoveries, on the mainland as well as in Crete, fall naturally into place. We look forward to the volume-or volumes-that will complete the story.

R. C. BOSANQUET

LORD CURZON OF KEDLESTON

1. The Life of Lord Curzon. By the EARL OF RONALDSHAY. Ernest Benn. 1928.

3 vols. 2. Lord Curzon in India. Being a selection from his speeches as Viceroy and Governor-General of India, 1898-1905. With an introduction by Sir THOMAS RALEIGH, K.C.S.I. Macmillan. 1906.

3. Russia in Central Asia (1889). Persia and the Persian Question (1892). Problems of the Far East (1894). By the Hon. G. N. CURZON. Longmans.

4. Monograph on the Pamirs and the Source of the Oxus. By the Hon. G. N. CURZON. Stanford. 1896.

5. Frontiers. (Romanes Lecture). By Lord CURZON OF KEDLESTON. Oxford University Press. 1907.

6. Principles and Methods of University Reform. By Lord CURZON OF KEDLESTON. Oxford University Press. 1909.

7. British Government in India. By Lord Curzon of Kedleston.

Cassell. 1925.

8. The India We Served. By Sir W. R. LAWRENCE. Cassell. 1928.

A

2 vols.

MONG the statesmen of our own era, history will assuredly assign a high, perhaps a unique, place to Lord Curzon of Kedleston. By many of his contemporaries he was as much misunderstood as Castlereagh. There do not stand to his credit any great legislative achievements such as those which will keep Peel's memory alive. He never evoked the admiration or enjoyed the affection of his countrymen in the same degree as Palmerston, Gladstone or Disraeli. He neither waged a great war nor concluded a triumphant peace. The part which he played in European diplomacy brought little distinction to himself or credit to his country. Nevertheless, when the history of our own day falls into perspective--and the time is not yet-it can hardly be doubted that a conspicuous niche will be filled by the figure of Lord Curzon.

Nor is the interest attaching to his life's drama diminished by the tinge of tragedy which, despite his splendid gifts and the brilliant success he attained, appears to pervade it. Born of ancient lineage, he was munificently endowed by nature; to a singularly handsome countenance was added a graceful and commanding presence; Curzon might indeed have posed as a model for Lord Lytton's portrait of Castlereagh

Stately in quiet highbred self-esteem,

Fair as the Lovelace of a lady's dream.

With his fine presence, his capacious intellect, with a voice at once powerful and exquisitely modulated, he lacked none of the natural gifts of a great orator. And every gift bestowed on him by nature was sedulously cultivated. His industry was untiring; his capacity for taking broad and long views was equalled only by his mastery of detail. Nothing great or small escaped his vigilant eye he would perhaps have been a greater man, and certainly would have been more popular, had his vigilance been reserved for matters of high importance. But he was never disposed to delegate work or responsibility. It was an essential part of his philosophy of life that if you would have a thing well done you must do it yourself. From this point of view it was perhaps unfortunate that so much of his best work was done in India, for the Indian official resents nothing so much as a hustling chief. An extract from the diary of Sir Walter Lawrence, his devoted private secretary, admirably illustrates this point : "Viceroy talks in despair about the work and the machinery. I tell him that India is all right half-speed, but it breaks down full-speed look at railways, posts and telegraphs now that the Durbar is approaching. They will all break down, and so do the departments when the Viceroy is a man who goes full-speed" (December, 1902). Sir Walter proceeds: "An old journalist, a man of excellent judgment whom we all trusted, said to me: 'It is a mistake for your Chief to come down into the arena. If he comes down he must expect trouble.' He was right, and the trouble was aggravated by the fact that my Chief was not content with the rôle of Espada, but wanted to take the parts of Picador and Banderillero as well."

But I anticipate the sequence of events. In doing so I foreshadow the" tragedy " to which I referred. That word, grossly misused in the vernacular of Fleet Street, should be reserved for the story of men and women in high place or of heroic stature. The life of Curzon fulfils the condition. It is the life of one who, lacking no gift save that of physical health, nevertheless fell short of the complete success he so ardently desired, and seemed certain to attain; one who, though he could win and retain the love of women and the affection of intimate friends, never achieved the popularity he coveted; a great Indian Viceroy, perhaps one of the greatest, who left India under a sense of failure and defeat; a great English statesman who was not merely denied the highest

place which he had thought to be within his grasp, but was actually superseded in the office which was his own chosen sphere of work. Is there no tinge of tragedy here?

To the telling of this intensely interesting story, Lord Ronaldshay has devoted three large volumes, and each deals with one of the three portions into which Curzon's life naturally divides. The first volume covers his youthful successes at Eton and Oxford, his brilliant début in parliament, his travels, his official apprenticeship at the India Office and the Foreign Office, and the attainment, while still short of forty, of his life's ambition, by his appointment as Viceroy of India. The second tells the chequered, though predominantly splendid, story of his viceroyalty. The third deals with his work as Chancellor of the University of Oxford, with his reabsorption in English politics, his work as a member of the War Cabinet, as leader of the House of Lords and as Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs under Mr. Lloyd George, Mr. Bonar Law and Mr. Baldwin; and finally the storm-tossed close of this varied and valued life the cup of complete success dashed from his lips just as he believed he was about to taste it, and the culminating disappointment involved in the surrender of the Foreign Office. Yet never did character triumph more splendidly over circumstances than in those two closing years of his life. Never did. Curzon show himself to the world more proud in fortitude, more entirely loyal to the leader preferred to himself, more wholeheartedly devoted to the service of his country. Nor was he ever so well understood by his countrymen, nor so highly esteemed, as at the moment when he died, a disappointed and disillusioned

man.

George Nathaniel Curzon, eldest son of the Reverend Alfred Nathaniel Holden Curzon, fourth Baron Scarsdale, was born at Kedleston, near Derby, on January 11, 1859. The Curzons had lived at Kedleston, in unbroken line, for nearly eight centuries, and the stately house exercised a powerful influence on the mind of the young heir. George Curzon was indeed peculiarly susceptible to architectural influences, particularly to those of his many homes. As his brother wrote, shortly after Curzon's death, to the present writer :

George loved architecture and that is the reason why he occupied so many houses, all famous examples of different styles and periods, e.g. his own home Kedleston, Hackwood and Montacute; and why