Page:Lucian (IA lucianlucas00collrich).pdf/92

82 one and I on the other. Now look all round you and see what you can see.

Cha. I see a large extent of land, and as it were a great lake all round it, and mountains and rivers bigger than Cocytus or Phlegethon,—and men,—oh! such little creatures! and some kind of hiding-places or burrows they have.

Merc. Those are cities, which you call burrows.

Cha. Do you know, Mercury, we seem to have done no good, after all, in moving Parnassus, and Œta, and these other mountains?

Merc. Why so?

Cha. Because I can see nothing distinctly from this height. I wanted not merely to see cities and hills, as one does in a picture, but men themselves, and what they do, and what they talk about,—as I did when you met me first and found me laughing; I had just been uncommonly amused at something.

Merc. And what was that, pray?

Cha. Some man had been invited by one of his friends to dinner, I conclude, for to-morrow. "I'll be sure to come," says he—and just as he was speaking, down comes a tile from the roof somehow, and kills him. So I laughed to think he couldn't keep his appointment. And now I think I had better get down again, that I may see and hear better.

Merc. Stay where you are. I've a remedy for this difficulty too, I can make you marvellously keen-sighted, by using a certain incantation from Homer, invented for this special purpose. The moment I say