of dying, we might be tempted to conjecture that he had met with some disquisitions of the Jewish doctors on the mode in which mankind would have been translated if they had remained in Paradise; and he clearly intends to ridicule some unlucky traveller, who had given too faithful an account of some animal of the opossum tribe, where he says that they use their bellies as a pouch, opening them, and putting in whatever they choose, and that their little ones, when they are cold, creep into them. The last wonder which he describes is a mirror, which is placed over a well not very deep. "If then any one goes down into the well, he hears everything that is said amongst us upon the earth; and if he looks into the mirror, he sees all cities and all nations, as if he were standing over each. Then I saw my family also, and all my country; but whether they too saw me I cannot yet tell with certainty. But whosoever does not believe that these things are thus, if ever he himself should come thither, he will know that I tell truth."

In their voyage from the Moon into the ocean, they arrive at a very singular place, Lychnopolis, or the City of Lamps. It is not easy to understand the aim of Lucian's satire in this fiction; unless perhaps he intended to ridicule those philosophers who held that the soul of man was of the nature of fire, and after death ascended to the sphere of Æther, the purest and highest of the elements. "When we disembarked, we found no men, but many lamps running about, and spending their time in the forum and about the port; some of them little, and as one may say, poor; but a few of the great and powerful very bright and shining. And there had been habitations made for them, and lanterns for each individually; and they had names like men; and we heard them uttering voices; and they did us no harm, but even invited us to partake of their hospitality; but nevertheless we were afraid, and none of us ventured to take either food or sleep. Their public buildings are erected in the middle of the city, where their governor sits all night long, calling each by his name; and whosoever does not answer is condemned to die, as having deserted his post; and their death is to be extinguished. Here I recognised our lamp ȧlso; and having addressed him, I inquired about matters at home, how they were, and he told me everything." On the next day they sail near the clouds, and see at a little distance the city of Nephelococcygia; upon which Lucian takes occasion to vindicate the veracity of Aristophanes ; and in a day or two, as the wind subsides, they descend gently upon, the

sea.

Our travellers seem always to be delivered from one adventure only to meet with another still more wonderful and perilous. On the second day after their return to the ocean, they are swallowed, ship and all, by an enormous sea monster. It is not difficult to conjecture the story against which the ridicule of Lucian is here directed. This part of the

narrative is drawn out to a tedious length. The inside of the fish seems to be quite an inhabited and cultivated country. Besides various tribes, who may be considered as Aborigines, they find an old man and his son, who are the survivors of a crew which had been swallowed in the same manner as themselves. With their assistance they kill the monster by burning the forests which grow within him, and make their escape. Even during their residence in the fish, they are not quite shut out from the light of heaven; for the beast very graciously gapes once every hour. During some of these yawns, they are witnesses to a sea-fight between two nations of men half a stadium in height, and sailing in floating islands. The end of the description is perhaps worth transcribing. Our readers will remember the Leviathan of Milton:

Him, haply slumbering on the Norway foam,

The pilot of some small night-foundered skiff,
Deeming some island, oft as seamen tell,
With fixed anchor in his scaly rind,

Moors by his side under the lee, while night
Invests the sea, and wished morn delays.

But this is nothing compared to the use made of the Leviathan of Lucian. The victorious party "erected a trophy of their island engagement, by suspending one of the enemy's islands to a wooden post upon the head of the monster. And that night they lodged round about the beast, having made fast their halsers to him, and lying at anchor close by him; for they use anchors also of great size and strength, made of glass. And the next day they sacrificed upon the monster, and buried their own men upon him, and sailed away.”

In the Second Book of the History upon which we are now entering, there is a richer fancy and more refined wit than in the first part. Lucian, like all professed deriders of the marvellous, seems to have disbelieved much that was really true. If Captain Parry's voyage had been performed in his age, the adventurous navigator would have fared no better than Ctesias or Iambulus. His mirth has evidently been excited by some account of the Northern Ocean; for soon after his escape from the monster, the sea is suddenly frozen round the vessel, and they live for thirty days in a cave in the ice, and subsist upon the fish which they dig up. Afterwards they meet, not indeed with "seas of milk and ships of amber," but with seas of milk and islands of cheese; and fall in with the Phellopodes, a nation of men with cork feet, skimming fearlessly over the surface of the water. Right a-head, at the distance of about five hundred stadia, lay a low flat island. "And now we were near it, and a wonderful air breathed round about us, such as the historian Herodotus says is exhaled from the Happy Arabia; for a scent struck upon our senses, as fragrant as if it flowed from the rose and the

narcissus and the hyacinth, and lilies and violets, and the myrtle besides, and the laurel, and the blossoming vine." Milton has seized the same image, and particularized and dilated it with his peculiar beauty and sublimity::

As when to them who sail

Beyond the Cape of Hope, and now are past
Mozambic, off at sea north-east winds blow
Sabæan odours from the spicy shore

Of Araby the Blest; with such delay

Well pleased they slack their course, and many a league
Cheered with the grateful smell old Ocean smiles.

By this sweet scent they are allured to approach more closely to the island. "There we saw on every side of it many spacious harbours, in which the water was perfectly smooth, and rivers as clear as crystal flowing gently into the sea, and meadows besides, and woods, and singing birds, some warbling on the shores, and many upon the branches. And a light and pure air was diffused over the country; and the woods waved gently with the fragrant gales breathing through them; and as the branches moved, a sweet continuous melody whispered from them, like the sound of flutes in the solitary fields." They land; but as they are advancing through a flowery meadow, they are seized by a guard, bound with garlands of roses, and led into the presence of the sovereign of the country. They find now that they are in the Island of the Blessed, and that they are to appear before Rhadamanthus. They arrive just as Ajax is condemned to be put into the hands of Hippocrates to be dosed with hellebore, and not to be re-admitted to the immortal banquet till he has recovered his senses. Some other causes are heard; and at last they are called to give an account of themselves. They relate their history, and Rhadamanthus is much perplexed by the arrival of living men in this abode of spirits. He holds a solemn council, at which, amongst others, Aristides assists. His final sentence, however, is wonderfully merciful: the punishment of their profane curiosity is deferred till after their death, and they are allowed to remain seven months upon the island, and share in all the pleasures of the heroes.

No sooner was this decision pronounced, than their chains of roses fell off spontaneously, and they were thus set at liberty, and conducted to the city, which is the scene of the Symposium of the Blessed. The city is all of gold, and surrounded with a wall of emerald: it has seven gates of cinnamon, each made of a single piece of the wood. The pavement is all of ivory. The temples of the gods are built of beryl; and their altars are of the largest size, and each of a single amethyst. All round the city flows a river of the finest and most fragrant of scented

oils. Their baths are magnificent buildings of crystal, and heated with fires of cinnamon; and the bathing vessels, instead of water, are filled with warm dew. The description which Lucian gives of the spirits of the blessed accords with the vulgar notion of ghosts, in representing them as visible, and as performing the functions of material beings, yet not sensible to the touch. Their dress is of materials which would best suit such airy creatures, for they are clothed in the finest spiders' webs dyed purple. With them there is neither night nor day; but their light is like the morning twilight before the rising of the sun. The imagination of Lucian has led him to the same thought which is so beautifully expressed in that most sweet and tender invocation to the spirit of a departed friend :

Too solemn for day, too sweet for night,
Come not in darkness, come not in light;
But come in some twilight interim,

When the gloom is soft, and the light is dim.

Spring is the only season of the Happy Island, and Zephyr the only wind. The country is adorned with every sort of flower and plant; the vines bear fruit every month; the pomegranates and apples and other trees thirteen times in the year. The corn produces loaves instead of grain; and fountains of water, honey, milk and wine, and perfume, bubble up on every side.

The banquet is held without the city, in the Elysian plain. This is a most beautiful meadow, surrounded by a thick wood of every sort of tree, which overshadows the banqueters. They recline on couches of flowers, and are attended by the Winds, who perform every service but that of pouring out the wine. Around them grow immense trees of the very purest crystal, which in place of fruit bear cups and vases of every size and fashion. These they pluck, and of their own accord they become full of wine. They do not wear garlands, but nightingales and other singing birds pluck flowers from the meadows, and let them fall, as they fly over, like a shower of snow, and accompany their fragrant offerings with the sweetest melody; and thick clouds draw up the perfume from the fountains and the river; and as they hang over the banquet, they are pressed gently by the Winds, and distil it in drops like dew: music and song are not wanting at the feast; the verses of Homer are sung by choruses of boys and virgins, to the music of Eunomus, and Arion, and Anacreon, and Stesichorus; and when these cease, they are followed by a second chorus of swans, and nightingales, and swallows; and when these have sung, the whole wood becomes melodious at the impulse of the Winds. It must not be forgotten that there are two fountains in the Elysian plains, of which all the guests drink before they place themselves at the banquet, the Fountains of Pleasure and of Laughter.

Among the inhabitants of the Island of the Blessed are the Heroes, the Wise Men, and the most celebrated Philosophers. Socrates indeed is so argumentative, and contentious, and ironical, that he is in danger of being turned out; and Plato was not there, but was reported to be dwelling in a Republic formed on his own model, and governed by his own laws. Lucian, in accordance with his own philosophy, allots the most distinguished stations to Aristippus and Epicurus: there were no Stoics there, for they were still climbing the steep hill of virtue; and Chrydippus especially was forbidden to set foot upon the island, till he had gone through four courses of hellebore. The Academicians were willing to come, but they were waiting and considering, for they had not yet clearly ascertained whether there were such an island or not.

Lucian had many conversations with Homer, and learned from him that he was in fact a Babylonian; but he does not seem to have gained much more information from him. The tranquillity of the Happy Island was for a short time disturbed by the apprehension of an invasion from some of the impious, who had escaped from their place of punishment, under the command of Phalaris and Busiris and other formidable leaders; they are defeated, however, by the Heroes. The prize of valour is adjudged to Socrates, and he is presented with a large and beautiful park, where he establishes a Necracademia, or Academy of the Dead; and Homer writes an epic poem on the war. But another event happens, which affects our travellers more nearly, and hastens their dismissal from the island. Cinyrus, the youth whom they had found in the fish, and who had escaped with them, falls in love with Helen. our ashes live our wonted fires:" Helen cannot resist, and runs away with him. The fugitives are pursued by fifty of the heroes in a bark of Asphodel, overtaken just as they are entering the sea of milk, and brought back. The new Paris and his accomplices are scourged with mallow and sent off to the abodes of the impious, and Lucian and the rest of the crew compelled to quit the island.

"Still in

In their voyage they pass by the countries set apart for the punishment of the wicked. On one of these they land, and witness the sufferings of their late companion Cinyrus: they see many other culprits, "but those endured the severest punishments who had been guilty of falsehood in their lifetime, or who had written histories which were not true; among whom were Ctesias the Cnidian, and Herodotus, and many others: when therefore I saw these, I had good hope for the future ; for I was not conscious to myself of ever having told a falsehood." They next came in sight of the Island of Dreams, which for some time seems to retreat before them; they land at last about twilight, and proceed to the city, and find it embosomed in a thick wood, in which the only trees are huge poppies and mandragoras, with multitudes of bats clinging to the branches. The city is surrounded by a wall resembling a rainbow,