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hill. His third was the entire destruction by fire of his house, furniture, and books, together with the savings which he had laid by for his daughters' marriage portions. His fourth was being incarcerated in the county jail by Squire Thornhill for rent, his wife and family being driven out of house and home. His fifth was the announcement that his daughter Olivia was dead," and that his daughter Sophia had been abducted. His sixth was the imprisonment of his eldest son, George, for sending a challenge to Squire Thornhill. His cup of sorrow was now full, and comfort was at hand: (1) Olivia was not really dead, but was said to be so in order to get the vicar to submit to the squire, and thus obtain his release. (2) His daughter Sophia had been rescued by Mr. Burchell (Sir William Thornhill), who asked her hand in marriage. (3) His son George was liberated from prison, and married Miss Wilmott, an heiress. (4) Olivia's marriage to the squire, which was said to have been informal, was shown to be legal and binding. (5) The old vicar was released, reestablished in his vicarage, and recovered a part of his fortune.

"Ivanhoe," a novel by Sir W. Scott (1820). The most brilliant and splendid of romances in any language. Rebecca. the Jewess, was Scott's favorite character. The scene is laid in England in the reign of Richard I., and we are introduced to Robin Hood in Sherwood Forest, banquets in Saxon halls, tournaments, and all the pomp of ancient chivalry. Rowena, the heroine, is quite thrown into the shade by the gentle, meek, yet high-souled Rebecca.

"Vanity Fair," a novel by W. M. Thackeray (1848). Becky (Rebecca) Sharp, the daughter of a poor painter, dashing, selfish, unprincipled, and very clever, contrives to marry Rawdon Crawley, afterwards his excellency Colonel Crawley, C. B., governor of Coventry Island. Rawdon expected to have a large fortune left him by his aunt, Miss Crawley, but was disinherited on account of his marriage with Becky, then a poor governess. Becky contrive to live in splendor on "nothing a year," gets introduced at court, and is patronized by Lord Steyne, earl of Gaunt; but this intimacy giving birth to a great scandal, Becky breaks up her establishment, and is reduced to the lowest Bohemian life. Afterwards she becomes the "female companion" of Joseph Sedley, a wealthy "collector," of Boggley Wollah, in India. Having insured his life and lost his money, he dies suddenly under very suspicious circumstances, and Becky lives for a time in splendor on the Continent. Subsequently she retires to Bath, where she assumes the character of a pious, charitable Lady Bountiful, given to all good works. The other part of the story is connected with Amelia Sedley, daughter of a wealthy London stock-broker, who fails, and is reduced to indigence. Captain George Osborne, the son of a London merchant, marries Amelia, and old Osborne disinherits him.. The young people live for a time together, when George is killed in Waterloo. Amelia is reduced to great poverty. but is befriended by Captain Dobbin, who loves her to idolatry, and after many years of patience and great devotion, she consents to marry him. Becky Sharp rises from nothing to splendor, and then falls; Amelia falls from wealth to indigence, and then rises

MYTHOLOGY AND FOLK-LORE.

'Tis a history

Handed from ages down; a nurse's tale,
Which children, open ey'd and mouth'd devour,
And thus, as garrulous ignorance relates,

We learn it and believe.

-SOUTHEY.

VAGARIES OF HUMAN BELIEF.

Chinese history, or fable, begins 2205 B. C. Orion was a giant hunter, noted for his beauty. Puck and Robin Goodfellow are identical myths. The Ogri were giants said to feed on human flesh. Euphrasia was the name of "the Grecian Daughter.” Olympus, in Greece, was on the confines of Macedonia. In Vulcan's mirror were seen the past, present and future. The toadstool is called in Ireland the "fairy's mushroom." A task that makes no progress is likened to Penelope's web. At the age of one year Jupiter was making war on the Titans. All known languages have a story of "Jack the Giant-Killer." Loki was the god of strife and evil in Scandinavian mythology. Jupiter chose the eagle as the best preservative against lightning. The original Tom Thumb was a dwarf knighted by King Arthur. The obi superstitions of the negro are still prevalent in the South. The leprechaun was an Irish goblin who could direct you to hidden gold. Apotheosis was the deification, or raising of a mortal to the rank of The pagan priests of Egypt were the first to reduce mythology to a system.

a god.

As late as 1805 a woman was tried for witchcraft at Kircudbright, Scotland.

The oak is sacred to Jupiter because he first taught mankind to live upon acorns.

Where fable ends and real history begins is an obscure line in the annals of all nations.

The chief astronomers, from Ptolemy down to Kepler, were all believers in astrology.

According to Homer Mesopotamia had a breed of asses which never fled from an enemy.

"Born in the foam of the sea,' ," is the signification of Aphrodite, the Greek name for Venus.

The goat was the animal usually sacrificed to Bacchus, on account of its propensity to destroy the vine.

It is Memnon's statue, at Thebes, which is said to make musical sounds when struck by the morning sun.

The ordinary events of nature transformed into allegory would explain very many of the legends of the ancients.

The gypsies are said to be wanderers because they refused shelter to the Virgin and Christ Child on the flight into Egypt.

The peculiar term "Black Art," is applied to the jugglery of conjurers and wizards who profess to have dealings with the devil.

The wave-crests in Killarney Lake, Ireland, are called by the fishermen. the "white horses of O'Donoughue," from a chieftain of that ilk who perished in its waters.

The proper name of Confucius was "Kong," but his followers added "fu-tse," meaning master or teacher. His books are regarded by the Chinese as the fountain of all wisdom.

Davy Jones is a sailor's familiar name for a malignant sea-spirit or the devil generally. The common phrase "Davy Jones' locker" is applied to the ocean as the grave of men drowned at sea.

In all ancient mythologies the sneeze is significant. If a Hindoo, while performing his morning ablutions in the Ganges, should sneeze before finishing his prayers, he immediately begins them over again.

It was at one time a common belief that infants were sometimes taken from their cradles by fairies, who left instead their own weakly and starveling elves. The children so left were called "changelings."

In the northern mythology the Walkyri are either nine or three times nine divine maidens who cleave their way through air and water to lead to Odin those who have fallen in battle and who are worthy of Walhalla.

Dagon, the national god of the Philistines, half-man, half-fish, is mentioned in the Old Testament as having temples at Gaza and Ashdod, Several names of places prove that the worship of Dagon existed also in other parts of Palestine.

The supposed spirits which pervade the stars, each star having its own spirit (or soul), are termed astral spirits. Paracelsus taught that every human being had an astral spirit; hence the influence of a person's particular star on his life.

According to the ancient German superstition, the werewolf was a man-wolf, who had the form of a man by day and that of a wolf by night. Lycanthropy, or wolf-madness, was prevalent in Europe, and especially in Germany, in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.

The name of the favorite charger of Alexander the Great was Bucephalus, and this was probably also the name of a peculiar breed of horses in Thessaly. The young hero was the first to break in the steed, and thus fulfilled the condition stated by an oracle as necessary for gaining the crown of Macedon.

Cynosure is the Greek name for the constellation of the Little Bear, which contains the pole star, by which the Phoenician mariners steered their course. The name is metaphorically applied to anything that attracts attention, or to which all eyes are turned.

The Scottish brownie has a rival in Spain who is called the Ancho, and who haunts the shepherds' huts, warms himself at their fires, tastes their clotted milk and cheese, converses with the family, and is treated with familiarity mixed with terror. The Ancho hates church bells.

Sibylline books in Roman history contained the prophecies of the Cumaan Sibyl, bought by Tarquin the Proud, and preserved in the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus, with which they were burnt, 83 B. c. They were consulted by order of the senate, in cases of prodigies and calamities.

An amulet was any object worn as a charm. It is often a stone, or a piece of metal, with an inscription or some figures engraved on it, and is generally suspended from the neck, and worn as a preservative against sickness or witchcraft. Its origin, like its name, seems to be oriental.

The cockatrice is a fabulous monster, often confounded with the basilisk and regarded as possessing similar deadly powers. To the charms of the basilisk it added a dragon's tail, armed with a sting; and it shared also its power of destroying by a glance, so often referred to in Shakespeare and other early writers.

Cuneiform is a term descriptive of a form of writing of which the component parts resemble a wedge. It was used by the peoples of Babylonia, Assyria and other ancient nations, and was inscribed upon stone, bronze, iron, glass and clay. It was not until the seventeenth century that the wedge-shaped characters were suspected to be other than "idle fancies of the architects."

The talisman was a species of charm, consisting of a figure engraved on metal or stone when two planets are in conjunction, or when a star is at its culminating point, and supposed to exert some protective influence over the wearer of it. The terms talisman and amulet are often considered nearly synonymous. but the proper distinctive peculiarity of the former is its astrological character.

Arthur's Round Table contained seats for one hundred and fifty knights. Three were reserved, two for honor, and one (called the "siege perilous") for Sir Galahad, destined to achieve the quest of the sangreal. If any one else attempted to sit in it, his death was the certain penalty. The table shown visitors at Winchester is one of several claimed to be the "original" Arthur's Round Table.

In the fanciful system of the Paracelsists the Undines were female water-sprites. They intermarry readily with human beings, and the Undine who gives birth to a child under such a union receives, with her babe, a human soul. But the man who takes an Undine to wife must be careful not to go on the water with her, or at least must not vex her while there, or she returns to her native element.

Isis was an Egyptian goddess. The deities of ancient Egypt might be male or female, but in neither case could the Egyptian worshipper conceive a deity as existing in isolation: to every deity of either sex there must be a counterpart of the other sex. It was to this notion that the goddess Isis owed her origin; she was the counterpart of Osiris, and this fact is expressed in the statement that she was at once wife and sister of Osiris.

In classical antiquities the cornucopia, the horn or symbol of plenty, is placed in the hands of emblematical figures of Plenty, Liberality, and the like, who are represented as pouring from it an abundance of fruits or corn. It is frequently used in architecture, sculpture and heraldry.

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A redoubtable hero was Berserker in the Scandinavian mythology. He was the father of twelve sons who inherited the name of Berserker, together with his frenzied war-like fury or "berserker rage. Baring Gould connects the name with the were-wolf myth. It literally means "'bear-sark" (shirt), not "bare-shirt."

The word hippodrome is derived from the Greek hippos, “a horse,” and dromos, "a racecourse," and is the Greek name for the place set apart for horse and chariot races. Its dimensions were, according to the common opinion, half a mile in length, and one-eighth of a mile in breadth. In construction and all the most important points of arrangement it was the counterpart of the Roman Circus.

The circus originally was an open oblong building for Roman enter. tainments. There were eight in Rome, the largest being the Circus Maximus, said to be 9,331% feet long and 2,187 feet wide, and able to seat 260,000 persons. There were held in them horse and chariot races, gymnastic contests, the Trojan games, and contests with wild beasts. The modern circus is so universally known as to need no description.

Befana is a kind of Santa Klaus, who visits children on Twelfth Night to put presents in a stocking hung at their bed. Befana, it is said, was an old woman busy cleaning her house when the Magi passed by, but she said she would look out for them on their return. As they went home another way, she is looking out for them still, but entertains a great fondness for young children. The word is a corruption of "Epiphania" (Epiphany.)

The tall, narrow circular towers-called round towers-tapering gradually from the base to the summit, found abundantly in Ireland, and occasionally in Scotland, are among the earliest and most remarkable relics of the ecclesiastical architecture of the British Islands. They have long been the subject of conjecture and speculation, but there can be now no doubt that they are the work of Christian architects, and built for religious purposes.

Walhalla is the place of residence for the fallen in battle in Scandinavian Mythology. The name Walhalla was given to a magnificent marble structure of nearly the same proportions as the Parthenon, erected by Ludwig I. of Bavaria (1830-41) as a temple of fame for all Germany, on an eminence two hundred and fifty feet above the Danube, near Ratis. bon. By means of statues, busts, reliefs, and tablets the mythology and history of Germany are illustrated, and her greatest names commemor ated.

Thulê was the name given by ancient Greeks and Romans to the most remote northern portion of the world then known. Whether an island or part of a continent nobody knows. It is first mentioned by Pytheas, the Greek navigator, who says it is "six days' sail from Britain, and that its climate is a "mixture of earth, air and sea." Ptolemy, with more exactitude, tells us that the 63° of north latitude runs through the middle of Thulê, and adds that "the days there are at the equinoxes [sic] twenty-four hours long." This, of course is a blunder, but the latitude would do roughly for Iceland.

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