his keeper—a thankless office! So when people get nervous at the appalling devastations the beast makes, they come to you for re-assurance. "Be easy, dear Sir and dear Madam," say you, "he is rapidly being trained, and will soon be quite tame. His last meal was seventeen thousand men, twenty-three fewer, you will observe, than the day before. There is no doubt at all that we shall soon be able to get him into harness, and make him fetch and carry to market." And what you say is grimly true: he took the Roman Empire to market, and it was cheapened and squabbled over by every brown-skinned huckster; he took the Greek mythology to market, and it was torn up and made into frills and cuffs for eighteenth-century poets; he took the Egyptian dynasties to market, and sold them for a little sand. He will take you and your History of Israel to market, I fear, and do you know what you will go for? Literally for an old song. As Gautier says:
But shall Poetry pass?
It remains,
And outlives graven brass."
Now and again, I admit, the beast shows good taste. It was only the other day he took the book of Genesis to market. An enterprising man of Science offered him a rare monkey for it. He took the monkey, and kept the book—a far-seeing transaction. The monkey seems healthy at present, but no doubt it will die. Let us talk of real things—sun, moon, stars, or the plays of Shakespeare, according to the list of realities drawn up by Keats. I am cloyed with perishables.
Hist. By all means. Perhaps you will allow me to say that first among realities I place History, sometimes it seems to methe
