And when he closed the Odyssey with,

The virgin-seen of Jove

In Mentor's form confirmed the full accord,

And willing nations knew their lawful lord,

had the closing lines of Absalom and Achitophel clean escaped him?

Henceforth a series of new time began,
The mighty years in long procession ran,
Once more the god-like David was restored,
And willing nations knew their lawful lord.

Certainly not: he knew them as well as you or I do. When he was about it, I wonder he didn't " convey" the greatest line in English poetry—

The mighty years in long procession ran.

What a line!' said the Doctor, in a sort of pious rapture, looking up to heaven.

'That chap Hector,' observed the Commodore, who didn't appear to have been impressed by his brother's remarks, is about as fine a fellow as ever I came across.'

But the Doctor was in a combative humour. Pish!' he exclaimed, derisively. A mere barbarian, with no virtues save the natural instincts of savagery, fidelity to his clan, love for his wife and family. No; the imaginative conception of the Iliad is the matchless son of Peleus. He is the most perfect type of the Pagan warrior and statesman that the world has ever seen. Restraint, magnanimity, tenderness, self-control-all

the virtues we would the least expect in a man of an originally ardent temper,-coloured though they be by a dark mental gloom, the sadness prophetic of early death-mark, one after another, the conduct of Achilles. But Hector is a mere lad,-who fights well and gallantly no doubt, and is not unfaithful to his young pretty wife-and small thanks to him.'

'How did they get on afterwards?' asked the Commodore; when they had sacked Troy, and got back to Greece? And what did they do to Helen?'

So, as it appeared that the sailor was in a peaceful humour, and could not be got to show fight, the Doctor put Mr. Worsley's admirable translation of the Odyssey into his hands, and went off to visit a patient who was nearing that awful gate,-janua vitae et mortis.

I was anxious to learn what the veteran thought of Odysseus; and about a fortnight afterwards I discovered him under the elm-tree with the volume open beside him. He was not reading at the moment: he has a trick of reading a few lines, and then allowing his mind and his eyes to wander off, while he compares the passage with his own experience, or the experience of his messmates.

he keeps the And I like the ever dreaming

'He's capital at a yarn,' he began; story moving briskly-it never flags. man himself. He is home-sick, and about the wife and weans across the water; yet he can share, not without content, the couch of an immortal. Just like the Admiral.' (Horatio Nelson is always the Admiral with him.) The Admiral could never resist a

woman.

Swift and keen against a foe; but saft as eider's down in a woman's hand. Aweel, aweel! the cutties hae a good deal to repent o', for the last twa or three thousand years or thereby. I canna wonder that they ca'd him the wise Odysseus. Yet though crafty, he is not base. Though he is never headstrong, though he ever keeps himself weel in hand-yet he can don his armour, and draw his sword, like a true gentleman and a fearless soldier. Now, let me tell you, Mr. Gray, that is a kind of character that we like the better the older we grow. There's nae wut in fighting against what maun be. A man may tear his hair and swear at his luck till he's black in the face, but it wunna move the Eternal purpose a single inch. This is what Odysseus has gathered in his wanderings. He submits cheerfully, or if not cheerfully, at least without vain defiance, to the Immortals,-or rather to fate and death, which are stronger than the capricious Gods. I ken naething better in its speerit than what he Calypso, when he is fain to try another venture. just thinking about it when you came up:

But if some God amid the wine-dark mere
With doom pursue me and my vessel mar,
Then will I bear it as a brave man should.
Not the first time I suffer. Wave and war
Deep in my life have graven many a scar;

Let this be numbered with the labours gone.'

says to

I was

So the veteran had been fascinated by this wonderful old story, which is as wild as Baron Munchausen and as minutely real as De Foe. But I think it was the

incessant sparkle of the sea in every page, and the pretty faces of the Greek girls, mortal and immortal, that chiefly won him. 'He must have kent the sea weel, the chap that wrote it, whoever he was.' And he repeated, one after the other, half-a-dozen passages which his memory had retained, such as—

Telemachus beside the barren wave

Paced forth in melancholy mood alone;
He in the hoary deep his hands did lave,
And to Athene prayed.

And he conceived a special liking for the Phæacians, and the white-armed Nausicaa, who is so proud of her sea-girt people :

That mortal is not living, nor can be,

Who brings us sword and fire. Far off we dwell,
Loved by the Gods and zoned by the deep sea.

6

After Nausicaa and Calypso, he was chiefly interested in Helen. 'The cutty!' he said, and so her husband took her hame wi' him. Well, he is a fine gentleman, worth a dozen of that feckless Paris. How noble, and hospitable, and sweet-mannered he is, this hero of the golden-hair, as they ca' him in these parts.

Good sooth have we then never broken bread

In strange men's houses, and found love grow wild
In far-off lands as hitherward we sped!

He has learnt the lessons of adversity, and even the wilful Helen has been subdued by his brave gentleness. And the beautiful sinner who left her husband and her child, is just as desperately beautiful as ever. In she

comes, sailing like a white-winged swan, and when her handmaids have arranged her spindle, and the violet wool, and the silver basket which Alcandra gave her, she sits down as calm and superb in her beauty as if a deluge of blood had not been spilt for her sake. Of course she is ready to confess, in a pretty off-hand way, that it was wrong and ungrateful in her to run away from home; but then-but then-it was not her fault : she had lippened to Aphrodite; Aphrodite was to blame; and she quickly repented the step she had taken :

Already I bewailed the day,
When Aphrodite did my steps convey
From Sparta and my fatherland so dear,
Leaving my child an orphan far away,

And couch, and husband who had known no fear,
First in all grace of soul, and beauty shining clear.

And so, that little adventure concluded, and Troy in ashes, and many heroes in Hades, they are all reconciled again, and she has been taken back to the couch of her forgiving lord:

And near him long-robed Helen, the divine, lay down. Ah! those women! those women!' With which general reflection the Commodore relapsed into silence.

Here we were joined by the Doctor and Letty. I told him of the subjects we had been discussing. He was not prepared to agree with any of us-and so he informed us.

'What a fuss these fellows make about little or nothing! I don't believe that Helen was a bit prettier