Page:Whyte-Melville--Bones and I.djvu/135

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GOLD FOR SILVER.
127

a doctor, a meteorologist, and universal referee for gods and men. He taught the latter all the arts necessary to extort a livelihood from the earth; showed them how to yoke their oxen and bridle their steeds. He was wise, laborious, provident, and paternal—the first philosopher, the great benefactor of his time, and—his reward was to lie in chains on Mount Ætna with a vulture sheathing her beak in his heart.

Can we not see in this heathen parable some glimmering of the Great Hope which was never entirely obscured to the ancient world?—some faint foresight of, some vague longing after, the great Example which has since taught its holy lesson of self-abnegation and self-sacrifice? It is not for me to enlarge on a topic so sacred and so sublime. Enough for us and such as we are, if by lavishing gold for silver freely on our