The period in which the story of The World’s Desire is cast, was aperiod when, as Miss Braddon remarks of the age of the Plantagenets,“anything might happen.” Recent discoveries, mainly by Dr.Schliemann and Mr. Flinders Petrie, have shown that there really was muchintercourse between Heroic Greece, the Greece of the Achaeans, and the Egypt ofthe Ramessids. This connection, rumoured of in Greek legends, is attested byEgyptian relics found in the graves of Mycenae, and by very ancient Levantinepottery, found in contemporary sites