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Rh from Clotho) the miserable end of the tyrant's prosperity. Then Mercury shows him the now desolate site of what once was Nineveh, and tells him how the great Babylon is fated to perish in like manner. As for the remains of Mycenæ, and Argos, and, above all, of the renowned Troy,—these Mercury is afraid to show his friend, lest when he returns to the Shades below he should strangle the poet for his exaggerations. The whole dialogue is very fine, and in a higher tone than is Lucian's wont to use, though no writer could use it with better effect.

Cha. Strange and multiform indeed is the crowd I see, and human life seems full of trouble. And their cities are like hives of bees, in which each has his own sting, and therewith attacks his neighbour; and some, like wasps, plunder and harry the weaker. But who are that crowd of shadows, invisible to them, who hover over their heads?

Merc. These, Charon, are Hope, and Fear, and Madness; and Lusts, and Desires, and Passions, and Hate, and suchlike. Of these, Folly mingles with the crowd below, and is, as one may say, their fellow-citizen. So also Hate, and Anger, and Jealousy, and Ignorance, and Distress, and Covetousness. But Fear and Hope hover above them; and the first, when she swoops down upon them, drives them out of their minds, and makes them cower and shudder; whilst Hope, still fluttering over them, the instant one thinks he has surely laid hold of her, flies up out of his reach, and leaves him balked and gaping, like Tantalus below,