nesian hero to the Theban Hercules is most striking; for while, on the one hand, he is serving Eurystheus as a slave, on the other, he appears as one who forms alliances and disposes of kingdoms. In Homer, Hercules has the aspect of a simple Hellenic Samson, a man of marvellous bodily strength, very natural to come to light in those wild times-a man by whom, no doubt, many very wonderful feats were achieved, and about whom many more wonderful were believed. The Hercules, however, of the full-blown Hellenic mythology is evidently a much more complex person-an agglomerate, perhaps, of many persons-a mixture certainly of a Theban or Argive Samson with the wellknown Melcarth, the sun-god of the seafaring merchants of ancient Tyre, and more ancient Sidon. The legends of Hercules perhaps afford a better instance than those of any other hero or god, except Apollo, of the various sources from which mythical accounts spring. Hercules is represented as a half naked man, with broad shoulders and brawny limbs, resting on a club, and covered round his loins with the skin of the Nemean lion. He appears, however, to have originally borne a spear and buckler, or a bow and sword-the latter representation having been substituted about the time of Stesichorus.

HERCULES' PILLARS.

In Canto xxv. of the Morgante Maggiore of Pulci there is a curious dialogue between Rinaldo and a familiar demon named Astaroth, concerning the then so-called Pillars of Hercules. The demon says:- "An old and hallowed error has long prevailed, that no one can venture westward of this point without incurring certain death. Know then that this is a vain supposition, for it is possible to navigate far beyond, as the sea is level everywhere, although our world has a round form, as everything above is attracted to the centre, and the earth itself stands suspended among the stars. And ships shall proceed far beyond the boundaries which Hercules fixed here in times of ignorance; and they will discover another hemisphere where are towns, nations, and empires. Those are the antipodes, and they adore the Sun, and Jupiter, and Stars, they have trees and cattle as you have, and often wage war against one another." Pulci wrote this fifteen years at least before Columbus sailed on his memorable expedition. Rinaldo asks whether the antipodes are of Adam's race, and are capable of obtaining salvation. To this delicate question the demon answers that all men may be saved by the cross, and that the day will come when, after many errors and wanderings, all will acknowledge the truth,

and find acceptance. The whole passage is curious as illustra tive of the state of mind among men of information in Italy in that age. In pathos and loftiness some passages are equal to Dante or Tasso. The poet evidently wrote in earnest. But he occasionally breaks out, in the midst of his most serious narrative, into a fit of coarse humour, as if by way of relaxation. While the fearful conflict is raging in the glen of Roncesvalles, the poet describes two demons keeping watch in a deserted chapel on the outskirts of the defile, intent upon seizing and securing the souls of the Saracens who fell in the battle as their lawful prey. The eagerness of these satanic sentries is described with much drollery.

It is a singular fact that the first edition of Pulci's Morgante Maggiore, with all its freedom of thought and expression, came out in 1481 from the press of the convent of Ripoli at Florence, and that some of the nuns, and one Marietta among them, acted as compositors, and were paid accordingly by Father Vincenzo Fineschi, Domenicano. There was a much greater degree of freedom in speaking and writing in Italy during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries than there has been at any time since. The change took place about the middle of the sixteenth century, when the alarm about the spreading of the doctrines of the Reformation induced Pope Pius III. to establish permanently, with the consent of Charles V., the Court of the Inquisition, which effectually silenced both tongues and

pens.

THE GREEK WARRIORS ALSO MEN OF HIGH INTELLECT.

"In the ancient world, the Greek warriors," says Mr. Buckle, in his History of Civilization in England, were not only possessed of considerable accomplishments, but were comprehensive thinkers in politics as well as in war, and were in every respect the first characters of the age. Thus, to give only a few specimens from a single people, we find that the three most successful statesmen Greece ever produced were Solon, Themistocles, and Epaminondas, all of whom were distinguished military commanders. Socrates, supposed by some to be the wisest of the ancients, was a soldier; and so was Plato; and so was Antisthenes, the celebrated. founder of the Cynics. Archytas, who gave a new direction to the Pythagorean philosophy, and Melissus, who developed the Eclectic philosophy, were both of them well-known generals, famous alike in literature and in war. Among the most eminent orators, Pericles, Alcibiades, Andocides, Demosthenes, and Eschines, were all members

of the military profession; as also were the two greatest tragic writers, Eschylus and Sophocles. Archilochus, who is said to have invented iambic verses, and whom Horace took as a model, was a soldier; and the same profession could likewise boast of Tyrtæus, one of the founders of elegiac poetry; and of Alcæus, one of the best composers of lyric poetry. The most philosophic of all the Greek historians was certainly Thucydides; but he, as well as Xenophon and Polybius, held high military appointments, and on more than one occasion succeeded in changing the fortunes of war. In the midst of the hurry and turmoil of camps, these eminent men cultivated their minds to the highest point that the knowledge of that age would allow : and so wide is the range of their thoughts, and such the beauty and dignity of their style, that their works are read by thousands who care nothing about the sieges and battles in which they were engaged."

EMPEDOCLES, THE PYTHAGOREAN.

Empedocles, a native of Agrigentum, in Sicily, was distinguished, not only as a philosopher but also for his knowledge of natural history and medicine, and as a poet and statesman. It is generally believed that he perished in the crater of Mount Etna. The story is that he threw himself into it in order that, by disappearing suddenly and without trace, he might establish his claim to divinity; and the charge of arrogance founded on that pretension seems to have rested upon a misconception of his doctrine-that the human soul (and consequently his own) is

divine and immortal.

He is generally called a Pythagorean. He taught that originally all was one-God, eternal and at rest; a sphere and a mixture without a vacuum-in which the elements of things were held together in undistinguishable confusion by love-the primal force which unites like to unlike. In a portion of this whole, however, or, as he expresses it, in the members of the Deity, strife--the force which binds like to like—prevailed, and gave to the elements a tendency to separate themselves, whereby they first became perceptible as such, although the separation was not so complete but that each contained portions of the others. Hence organic life was produced; at first single limbs, then irregular combinations, till ultimately they received their present adjustments and perfection. But, as the force of love and hate are constantly acting upon each other for production or destruction, the present condition of things cannot persist for ever; and the world, which, properly, is not the all, but only the

ordered part of it, will again be reduced to a chaotic unity, out of which a new system will be formed, and so on for ever.

There is no real destruction of anything, only a change of combinations. It must be remarked that the final forces, love and hate, must not be supposed to be extrinsically impressed upon matter; on the contrary, while strife is inherent in the elements separately, love is the mass of things-nay, more, is one with it-God. Of the elements (which Empedocles seems to have been the first to exhibit as four distinct species of matter), fire, as the rarest and most powerful, he held to be the chief, and, consequently, the soul of all sentient and intellectual beings which issue from the central, fire, or soul of the world. The soul migrates through animal and vegetable bodies, in atonement for some guilt committed in its unembodied state when it is a demon; of which it was supposed that an infinite number existed. The seat of the demon when in a human body is the blood.

can

Closely connected with his view of the objects of knowledge was his theory of human knowledge. In the impure separation of the elements it is only the predominant one that the senses can apprehend, and, consequently, that although man know all the elements of the whole singly, he is unable to see them in their perfect unity, wherein consists their truth. Empedocles, therefore, rejects the testimony of the senses, and maintains that pure intellect alone can arrive at a knowledge of the truth. This is the attribute of the Deity: for man cannot. overlook the work of love in all its extent; and the true unity is only open to itself. Hence he was led to distinguish between the world as presented to our senses and its type, the intellectual world.

His explanation of the cognitive faculty, which rested upon the assumption that “like can only be known by like," is drawn, naturally enough, from his physical view. Man is capable of knowing outward things, since he is, like them, composed of the four elements, and of the two forces, love and hate; and it is especially by the presence of love within him that he is able to arrive at an intellectual knowledge of the whole, however inferior and imperfect to the divine.

THE SCHOOL OF PYTHAGORAS,

Or Merton Hall, at Cambridge, is a grange of the end of the twelfth or the beginning of the thirteenth century; but so much altered that very little remains of the original character. It has always been used for farm purposes since it was purchased by

Walter de Merton, and given to his college in 1270; and there is no reason to suppose that it was ever applied to any other use. The tradition of its having served as an academical lecture-room appears to be entirely unfounded; nor is its association with the philosopher of Samos any authority.

TRAVELS OF HERODOTUS.

Mr. Rawlinson, in an admirable and thoroughly impartial essay on the Life and Writings of Herodotus, prefixed to the first of his four portly volumes, has given approximately the limits of his personal geographical experience, and has shown how thoroughly he "did" the countries which he visited:

The quantum of travel has indeed been generally exaggerated; but after every deduction is made that judicious criticism suggests as proper, there still remains, in the distance between the extreme limits reached, and in the fulness of the information gained, unmistakable evidence of a vast amount of time spent in the occupation. Herodotus undoubtedly visited Babylon, Ardericca, near Susa, the remoter parts of Egypt, Scythia, Colchis, Thrace, Cyrêné, Zante, Dodôna, and Magna Græcia thus covering with his travels a space of thirty-one degrees of longitude (above 1,700 miles) from east to west, and of twentyfour of latitude (1,660 miles) from north to south. Within these limits, moreover, his knowledge is for the most part close and accurate. He has not merely paid a hasty visit to the countries, but has examined them leisurely, and is familiar with their scenery, their cities small and large, their various wonders, their temples and other buildings, and with the manners and customs of their inhabitants. The fulness and minuteness of his information is even more remarkable than its wide range, though it has attracted less observation. In Egypt, for instance, he has not contented himself with a single voyage up and down the Nile, like the modern tourist, but has evidently passed months, if not years, in examining the various objects of interest. He has personally inspected, besides the great capital cities of Thebes, Memphis, and Heliopolis, where his materials for the history of Egypt were chiefly collected, the còmparatively unimportant towns of Sais, Bubastis, Buto, Papremis, Cheminis, Crocodilopolis, and Elephantiné. He has explored the Lake Moris, the labyrinth, the line of the canal leading into the Arabian Gulf from the Nile, the borders of Egypt towards the Sinaitic desert, and portions of the tract, which he calls Arabia, between the valley of the Nile and the Arabian Gulf, or Red Sea, He is completely familiar with the various branches into