blem of prosperous wisdom. The Romans took augury from rats, — happy indeed the man who saw a white one; and Apollo, the most artistic of the Greek divinities, did not scorn the title of the rat-killer. In this very England of ours, the hardy Norseman rats bore their share in the Conquest nobly, and on the continent they have ruined a city and a river. Rats, they say, have scuttled ships, and it is certain they once ate up a bishop.
Not long ago, rat-catching engrossed much of the attention of the Government of India. The emergency was as serious as it was preposterous, for among the great vermin plagues that have afflicted the world the rat-invasion that devastated the Deccan must take high rank. Indeed, since the croaking nuisance took possession of the halls of Pharaoh, there have been very few visitations that have so directly insulted the majesty of man’s high birth, and so absurdly perplexed him.
Up and down the world at different times there have been many plagues — plagues of locusts and cockchafers, of mice and caterpillars, plagues that have ravaged the vineyards and the corn-fields, the pine-forests and the orchards, plagues that have afflicted the farmer and the merchant, the prince and the peasant, the tradesman and the manufacturer, plagues of beasts and birds and insects. Armies have actually marched against little things with wings, and senates have gravely sat in council over creeping creatures. The British force at Waterloo was not so numerous as that which the Moor sent against the advancing locusts; nor did the fathers of the city, fluttered by the news of Lars Porsena’s approach, meet in more serious concern than did the French Assembly to concert measures, the State
