Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 140.pdf/184

Rh  was in great glee, singing, after his fashion, all the way, though now and then half choked by the fierceness of the wind round some corner of rock, filled with raindrops that stung like hailstones.

By-and-by Janet stopped and began looking about her. This naturally seemed to her husband rather odd in the circumstances.

"What are ye efter, Janet? " he said, shouting through the wind from a few yards off, by no means sorry to stand for a moment, although any recovering of his breath seemed almost hopeless in such a tempest.

"I want to lay my umbrell in safity," answered Janet "— gien I cud but perceive a shuitable spot. Ye was richt, Robert; it's mair w'alth nor I can get the guid o'."

"Hoots! flingt frae ye, than, lass," he returned. "Is this a day to be thinkin' o' warl's gear?"

"What for no, Robert?" she rejoined. "Ae day's as guid's anither for thinkin' aboot onything the richt gait."

"What!" retorted Robert, "— whan we hae ta'en oor lives in oor han', an' can no more than houp we may cairry them throu' safe!"

"What's that 'at ye ca' oor lives, Robert? The Maister never made muckle o' the savin' o' sic like's them. It seems to me they're naething but a kin' o' warl's gear themsel's."

"An' yet," argued Robert, "ye'll tak thoucht aboot an auld umbrell? Whaur's yer consistency, lass?"

"Gien I war tribled aboot my life," said Janet, "I cud ill spare thoucht for an auld umbrell. But they baith trible me sae little, 'at I may jist as weel luik efter them baith. It's auld an' casten an' bow-ribbit, it's true, but it wad ill become me to drap it wi'oot a thoucht, whan him 'at could mak haill loaves, said 'Gether up the fragments 'at naething be lost.' — Na," she continued, still looking about her, "I maun jist dee my duty by the auld umbrell; syne come o' 't 'at likes, I carena."

So saying, she walked to the lee side of a rock, and laid the umbrella close under it, then a few large stones upon it to keep it down.

I may add, that the same umbrella, recovered, and with two new ribs, served Janet to the day of her death.

 

 From The Contemporary Review.

begins his history by relating how Phœnician traders brought "Egyptian and Assyrian wares" to Argos and other parts of Greece, in those remote days when the Greeks were still waiting to receive the elements of their culture from the more civilized East. His account was derived from Persian and Phœnician sources, but, it would seem, was accepted by his contemporaries with the same unquestioning confidence as by himself. The belief of Herodotus was shared by the scholars of Europe after the revival of learning, and there were none among them who doubted that the civilization of ancient Greece had been brought from Asia or Egypt, or from both. Hebrew was regarded as the primæval language, and the Hebrew records as the fountain-head of all history; just as the Greek vocabulary, therefore, was traced back to the Hebrew lexicon, the legends of primitive Greece were believed to be the echoes of Old Testament history. Ex Oriente lux was the motto of the inquirer, and the key to all that was dark or doubtful in the mythology and history of Hellas was to be found in the monuments of the Oriental world.

But the age of Creuzer and Bryant was succeeded by an age of scepticism and critical investigation. A reaction set in against the attempt to force Greek thought and culture into an Asiatic mould, The Greek scholar was repelled by the tasteless insipidity and barbaric exuberance of the East; he contrasted the works of Phidias and Praxiteles, of Sophocles and Plato, with the monstrous creations of India or Egypt, and the conviction grew strong within him that the Greek could never have learnt his first lessons of civilization in such a school as this. Between the East and the West a sharp line of division was drawn, and to look for the origin of Greek culture beyond the boundaries of Greece itself came to be regarded almost as sacrilege. Greek mythology, so far from being an echo or caricature of Biblical history and Oriental mysticism, was pronounced to be self-evolved and independent, and K. O. Müller could deny without contradiction the Asiatic origin even of the myth of Aphrodite and Adonis, where the name of the Semitic sun-god seems of itself to indicate its source. The Phœnician traders of Herodotus, like the royal maiden they carried away from Argos, were banished to the nebulous region of rationalistic fable.