of satire and criticism, but had no leanings towards the stake. Born at Samosata, on the banks of the Euphrates, about the year 120 of our era, Lucian had the opportunity of using the Greek language and living under the worldwide order which Rome had established. The Asiatic provinces of the Empire had become, in a way, as important as the capital itself. They were full of able men; they were stirred by the antagonisms of vanishing and oncoming ideas; they were the field of the first Christian communities in the Gentile world; and they were the seed-ground from which sprang the first heresies. Lucian came of " poor but honest parents," whose lack of means put a liberal education out of question. As the result of a family council, the boy was handed over to an uncle to be trained as a stone-cutter and statuary, having already shown some youthful skill in making wax figures of oxen, horses, and men. But his career was marred at the start by an unlucky accident. He was told to work lightly on a slab of marble in his uncle's shop, but, with the zeal of ignorance, he bore too heavily upon it, the slab broke, his uncle beat him, and he ran home weeping and indignant; and so ended his first effort to find his vocation. All this, and much more that is undoubtedly autobiographic, is to be found in a little piece called "The Dream," which is believed to have served later as a kind of personal prologue to his public readings of his works; for authors' readings are of very ancient origin. The profession of the rhetorician was then both popular and profitable; there was, if possible, more talk than there is to-day, and men were trained to talk, which was perhaps an improvement on the modern habit of self-developed talking. When Lucian became sufficiently expert to practice and teach the art of speech, he traveled, after the manner of his profession; coming in contact with the new religion at Antioch, where the disciples were first called Christians, and with the restless and keen-witted Greeks in the cities of lonia. Like the lecturer of our own time, his voice was lifted up in many cities; in Syria, Greece, Italy, and Gaul. The quick and fresh life of the last-named province made it a very congenial field, and for ten years Lucian educated his auditors and himself by discussion of the themes which were of interest to his contemporaries. In one of his dialogues he puts into the mouth of Rhetoric the statement that, although she had led him a very unquiet life, she had brought him both fame and wealth. At the age of forty he abandoned the profession which had served him so well, removed to Greece, and gave himself to the study of philosophy and to writing. He lived well at Athens, got rid of the last traces of his "barbarous Syrian speech," and so completely possessed himself of the Attic diction that his style became a marvel of precision, ease, and elegance. Here he wrote a group of dialogues which are touched with Aristophanic freedom and brightness, although devoid of the lyric splendor of which the great comedian alone possessed the secret. Of these dialogues the best-known and most popular deal with the Olympian deities in a fashion which seemed to the pious of the time irreverent, but to modern readers are not only sparkling with wit, but full also of a contagious quality of fun. Lucian had entirely gotten through with the pagan religions, and they had become so thoroughly identified with shams, delusions, and impositions of every sort upon credulity and ignorance that he was quite justified in waging war against them with any weapons which came to his hand. The fine quality of his mind and his keen sense of literary form made it impossible for him to use any save the most polished weapons. His effectiveness lay in the ease and gayety with which he treated the Olympian world. Its history in the poets and dramatists was at his fingers' ends; he knew all its vices, inconsistencies, and absurdities; he did not argue against it; he mercilessly "chaffed" it. And " chaffing" was fatal to the Olympian world in the decrepitude into which it had already fallen. "Zeus the Tragedian" might have been written yesterday, so modern is its note. Nothing so "larky," so audacious, and so entertaining is to be found in ancient literature as this delicious comedy, in which the gods make each other ridiculous with captivating unconsciousness that they are bringing the whole Olympian structure tumbling down about their heads. In this dialogue Lucian pictures the consternation of the deities over the possible result of a disputation between Timokles the Stoic and Damis the Epicurean, Damis affirming that the gods have no existence and no hand in the affairs of the world. Zeus calls a council of the deities, who are seated in the order of their taxable value, the golden images of the barbarians crowding the beautiful marble figures of the Greeks to the rear. Apollo fares especially ill, because his golden crown and the golden pegs of his lyre have been stolen. In the debate which follows, the keenest satire is concealed under the frank and easy talk of the deities, which becomes a general confession of their own uselessness and futility. Various courses of bringing the debate to a favorable termination are suggested and abandoned. When Poseidon proposes that Damis be summarily dealt with by a stroke of lightning, Zeus reminds him that the gods have nothing to do with such matters, but that the Fates determine the time and manner of each man's death; that his own trident has been recently stolen by fishermen, and that two locks of the Thunderer's hair, weighing six pounds apiece, have been carried off by temple-robbers from Pisa. And when Apollo, his eyes in a fine frenzy rolling, attempts to foretell the results of the discussion, he delivers himself of an oracle of orthodox ambiguity and absurdity. The dialogue is a masterly piece of satire; subtle, cutting, and merciless, brimming with wit, and put in charming literary form. Lightness of touch was quite as much at Lucian's command as that of any recent master of style. The philosophy of the day furnished this acute satirist with material which he used with equal destructive skill. In a dialogue between Charon and his passengers, the ferryman of the Styx is represented as stripping those who come for passage of all their encumbrances. The patrician lays aside his birth, honors, and statues, and the successful general his victories and trophies. When the philosopher's turn comes, he is addressed in these words: "Take your habit off, to begin with, if you please and now all that you have there great Jupiter! what a lot of humbug he was bringing with him, and ignorance, and disputatiousness, and vainglory, and useless questions, and prickly arguments, and involved statements-ay, and wasted ingenuity, and solemn trifling, and quips and quirks of all kinds! Yes, by Jove! and there are gold pieces there, and impudence, and luxury, and debauchery-oh! I see them all, though you are trying to hide them! And your lies, and pomposity, and thinking yourself better than anybody else -away with all that, I say! Why, if you bring all that aboard, a fifty-oared galley wouldn't hold you!" And the shams, pretensions, and vices of society fare no better; they are all transfixed by the keen shafts of this merciless wit. Lucian studied Christianity without bitterness, but in the same skeptical temper; regarding it, doubtless, as another phase of the prevalent superstition and hunger for novelty. Incidentally he says some very interesting things about the Christian communities of his time. There seems to be slight foundation for the charges of malicious misrepresentation of the new faith brought against him by some writers; on the other hand, it is clear that he utterly failed to discover the tremendous significance of the religion which was fast making its way through the Roman world. Two short romances not only illustrate the versatility of Lucian, but foreshadow the modern novel, and make it clear that if the time had been ripe he would have grasped the honors of the novelist as easily as those of the satirist. The most dramatic incident in his career was his visit to that marvelous impostor, Alexander of Abonotichas, of which Mr. Froude has given an account in one of his characteristic essays. In his later years Lucian was overtaken by reverses of fortune, and was appointed by Marcus Aurelius or by Commodus to a judicial position at Alexandria. This imperial kindness enabled him to carry on his literary activities, and the fruit of his long life is a great mass of work full of vivacity, intelligence, and charm. It was characteristic of his invincible wit that when, at a great age, gout laid its hand upon him, he promptly gave it satiric treatment; declaring that Philoctetes must have suffered from its ravages rather than from the poison of an arrow, as the old tradition ran, for in no other way could his vociferous howls and lamentations be accounted for! Among the classical writers Lucian stands almost alone as a purveyor of light reading, and it is surprising that an age which searches for light reading with a candle which never burns low has not yet discovered him. The explanation of this singular oversight may lie in the fact that, while Lucian's dialogues and tales are very easy reading, they are also very genuine literature. Famous American War-Horses By General James Grant Wilson, D.C.L. How he strode his brown steed! How we saw his blade brighten In the one hand still left-and the reins in his teeth! Asking where to go in-through the clearing or pine? TH HE Duke of Wellington possessed three valuable estates in Great Britain, Belgium, and Spain, presented to him by the Governments of those countries for services rendered during the Napoleonic wars. When the writer first visited the Duke's English estate of Strathfield Saye, he saw hanging in his sleeping-room a colored litho graph of General Zachary Taylor mounted on a white charger, well known in the army and throughout the country as Old Whitey. He is represented wearing a broad-brimmed straw hat, and with his right leg thrown over the pommel of the saddle-a favorite position of the old soldier. This counterfeit presentment of Taylor and his war-horse, or some other picture of the hero of Buena Vista and his white steed, was a household ornament in this country half a century ago. The writer learned that the picture was sent to the Iron Duke" by an anonymous admirer during the Mexican War, and that he was so much amused with the representation of the successful American commander that he directed the lithograph to be framed and hung in one of the apartments, known as the Coronation Chamber, where it remains to this day. Old Whitey was the most famous war-horse of that period. General William B. Franklin writes: "Oid Whitey was Taylor's favorite horse, and was as well known to his army as was the General himself. He was snowwhite, and the General always rode him, notwithstanding the remonstrances of his staff officers, who were apprehensive that his color would make him too prominent a mark in action. He resembled an English cob in figure, was a fine animal, and 51 GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE, OF VIRGINIA, AND HIS FAMOUS WAR-HORSE "TRAVELLER all who were near the General became very fond of the horse." General Longstreet "I remember clearly General Taysays: lor and his war-horse Old Whitey. His usual position, when his horse was standing, was one leg over the pommel of the saddle. Stonewall Jackson's horse, Sorrel, was much of the style of Old Whitey, but was not white." The last survivor of General Taylor's family writes: "You ask about Old Whitey; he was a great pet with us all, and was never ridden after my father's return from Mexico, and when he went to Washington the horse was sent to his plantation. During his term as President there was so much interest and curiosity expressed to see the old charger that he had him brought to Washington, and after my father's death he was sent back to the plantation, then the home of my brother Richard, where Whitey lived to a good old age. He was pretty well denuded of both mane and tail by sightseers." An army comrade, who saw Taylor's charger as he passed through Cumberland, Md., twoscore and seven years ago, corroborates the statement as to Whitey's almost hairless tail, adding that he was a wellformed, medium-sized saddle-horse, who created almost as much interest and curiosity in Cumberland as the advent of the General himself would have aroused. Only less celebrated than old Rough and Ready's favorite charger was Colonel Charles May's Black Tom, a magnificent and powerful coal-black gelding, such a peerless ebony steed as Theodore Winthrop introduces in his finest story under the name of Don Fulano, or the Forest King in Ouida's novel of "Under Two Flags." May mounted on Tom was the beau sabreur of Taylor's army in Mexico, enjoying the same reputation for dash that Custer won in the Army of the Potomac nearly two decades later. At the head of his squadron of the Second United States Dragoons, Captain May led a gallant charge against a Mexican battery in the battle of Resaca de la Palma, May 9, 1846, and, leaping Tom over one of the guns, captured General La Vega and the whole battery. May had an unsurpassed military record for leaping with Tom, and, it is possible, one that has never been equaled in While at Cold Harbor in June, 1864, the Government photographer pointed the camera at the General just as he was about to mount his famous charger. The noble animal heard the sound of the bugle in the campus near by, and his head is turned in that direction, his ears erect and nostrils distended, as though eager for Grant to mount and rush to the scene of action. the hunting-field or even on the race-course. The Hon. Francis Lawley, the highest English authority on the subject, gives thirty-four feet as the greatest distance ever covered by an English horse in a steeplechase or elsewhere. Black Tom jumped thirty-five feet on a wager during the war, and, later, May made another bet that he would, with a flying start of fifty yards, leap Tom across a canal thirty-six feet wide. They came thundering along, the jet-black steed nearly seventeen hands high, and May over six feet, sitting like a centaur ; Tom gave a mighty jump, but fell short, and of course man and horse had a very sudden and an exceedingly cold bath, for the attempt was made in midwinter, soon after the close of the war. For a Charlie O'Malley leap over a cart loaded with a cord of wood, standing in front of the City Hall, May was fined in a Baltimore court. On another occasion the dashing cavalryman rode Tom up the steps of the leading hotel of that city, cavorted around and through several of the principal apart One ments, and then calmly rode out again. Thoroughbred Tom was a spirited and rather difficult horse for any one but his master to ride or control. A Maryland friend, wishing to make a fine appearance before a Baltimore belle, borrowed May's horse, but, bearing too hard on the bit, when in front of the lady's residence in Cathedral Street, Tom began backing, finally tossing his rider off into the street, and galloping back to his stable. who well remembers them assures the writer that it was a beautiful sight to see Captain May prancing along the streets of Baltimore mounted on his magnificent Kentucky steed. Tom passed many tranquil years on a Maryland farm, where he was buried. Before this was done, his four hoofs were cut off, with a view to making drinking-cups as memorials of one of the most famous American horses of the Mexican War. In some way the project was delayed; the Colonel passed away without its being carried out; but it will yet be done by his widow, who carefully |