No such meeting has been held since the departure of Ulysses for Troy. As Telemachus passes to take his place there, all men remark a new majesty in his looks.

"So when the concourse to the full was grown,
He lifted in his hand the steely spear,

And to the council moved, but not alone,
For as he walked his swift dogs followed near.
Also Minerva did with grace endear

His form, that all the people gazed intent
And wondered, while he passed without a peer.
Straight to his father's seat his course he bent,
And the old men gave way in reverence as he went."

He makes his passionate protest before them all against the insufferable waste of his household by this crew of revellers, and against their own supineness in offering him no aid to dislodge them. Antinous rises to answer him, beginning, as before, with an ironical compliment-"the young orator's language is as sublime as his spirit." But the fault, he begs to assure him, lies not with the suitors, but with the queen herself. She has been playing fast and loose with her lovers, deluding them, for these three years past, with vain hopes and false promises. She had, indeed, been practising a kind of pious fraud upon them. She had set up a mighty loom, in which she wrought diligently to complete, as she professed, a winding-sheet of delicate texture for her husband's father, the aged Laertes, against the day of his death. Not until this sad task was finished, she entreated of them, let her be asked to choose a new bridegroom. To so much forbearance they had all assented; but lo! they had lately discovered that what she wrought by day she carefully

unwound by night, so that the task promised to be an endless one. Some of the handmaidens (who had found their own lovers, too, amongst their royal mistress's many suitors) had betrayed her secret. Antinous is gallant enough to add to this recital of Penelope's craft warm praises of the queen herself, even giving her full credit for the bright woman's wit which had so long baffled them all.

"Matchless skill

To weave the splendid web; sagacious thought,
And shrewdness such as never fame ascribed

To any beauteous Greek of ancient days,

Tyro, Mycene, or Alcmene, loved

Of Jove himself, all whom th' accomplished queen

Transcends in knowledge-ignorant alone

That, wooed long time, she should at last be won."—(Cowper.)

But they will now be put off no longer-she must make her choice, or they will never leave the house so long as she remains there unespoused. Telemachus indignantly refuses to send his mother home to her father; and repeats his passionate appeal to the gods for vengeance against the wrongs which he is himself helpless to deal with. At once an omen from heaven seems to betoken that the appeal is heard and accepted. Two eagles are seen flying over the heads of the crowd assembled in the marketplace, where they suddenly wheel round, and tear each other furiously with beak and talons. The soothsayer is at hand to interpret; the aged Halitherses, who reminds them all how he had. foretold, when Ulysses first left his own shores for Troy, the twenty years that would elapse before his return. Now, he sees by this portent, the happy day is

near at hand; nay, in his zeal for his master's house he goes so far as to urge the assembled people to take upon themselves at once the punishment of these traitors. One of the suitors mocks at the old man's auguries, and threatens him for his interference. The prophet is silenced; and Telemachus, finding no support from the assembly, asks but for a ship and crew to be furnished him, that he may set forth in search of his father. One indignant voice, among the apathetic crowd, is raised in the young prince's defence: it is that of Mentor, to whom Ulysses had intrusted the guardianship of his rights in his absence. His name has passed into a synonym for all prudent guardians and moral counsellors, chiefly in consequence of Fénélon's didactic tale of 'Télémaque,' already mentioned, in which the adventures of the son of Ulysses were "improved," with elaborate morals, for the benefit of youth; and in which Mentor, as the young prince's travelling tutor, played a conspicuous part. He vents his indignation here in a very striking protest against popular ingratitude :—

"Hear me, ye Ithacans ;-be never king
From this time forth benevolent, humane,
Or righteous; but let every sceptred hand
Rule merciless, and deal in wrong alone;
Since none of all his people, whom he swayed
With such paternal gentleness and love,

Remembers the divine Ulysses more."-(Cowper.)

He, too, meets with jeers and mockery from the insolent nobles, and Telemachus quits the assembly to wander in melancholy mood along the sea-shore-the

usual resort, it will be remarked, of the Homeric heroes, when they seek to calm the tumult of grief or anger. Such appeal to the soothing influence of what Homer calls the "illimitable ocean is not less true to nature than it is characteristic of the poetical and imaginative temperament. Bathing his hands in the sea waves— for prayer, to the Greek as to the Hebrew mind, demanded a preparatory purification-Telemachus lifts his cry to his guardian goddess, Minerva. At once

she stands before him there in the likeness of Mentor. She speaks to him words of encouragement and counsel. Evil men may mock at him now; but if he be determined to prove himself the true son of such a father, he shall not lack honour in the end. She will provide him ship and crew for his voyage. Thus encouraged by the divine Wisdom which speaks in the person of Mentor, he returns to the banquet-hall, to avoid suspicion. Yet, when Antinous greets him there with a mocking show of friendship, he wrenches his hand. roughly from his grasp, and quits the company. Taking into his counsels his nurse Eurycleia-who is the palace housekeeper also-he bids her make ready good store of provisions for his voyage: twelve capacious vessels filled with the ripest wine, twenty measures of fine meal, and grain besides, carefully sewn up in wallets. In the dusk of this very evening, unknown to his mother, he will embark; for the goddess (still in Mentor's likeness) has chartered for him a galley with twenty stout rowers, which is to lie ready launched for him in the harbour at nightfall. Eurycleia vainly remonstrates with her nursling on his dangerous purpose

"Ah! bide with thine own people here at ease.
There is no call to suffer useless pain,
Wandering always on the barren seas.'
But he 'Good nurse, prithee take heart again,
These things are not without a god nor vain.
Swear only that my mother shall not know
Till twelve days pass, or she herself be fain
To ask thee, or some other the tidings show,
Lest her salt tears despoil much loveliness with woe.''

Telemachus's resolve is fixed. As soon as the shadows of evening fall, Minerva sends a strange drowsiness on the assembled revellers in the hall of Ulysses, so that the wine-cups drop from their hands, and they stagger off early to their couches. Then, in the person of Mentor, she summons Telemachus to where the galley lies waiting for him, guides him on board, and takes her place beside him in the stern.

"Loud and clear

Sang the bluff Zephyr o'er the wine-dark mere
Behind them. By Athene's hest he blew.
Telemachus his comrades on did cheer

To set the tackling. With good hearts the crew
Heard him, and all things ranged in goodly order true.

"The olive mast, planted with care, they bind
With ropes, the white sails stretch on twisted hide,

And brace the mainsail to the bellying wind.

Loudly the keel rushed through the seething tide.

Soon as the good ship's gear was all applied,

They ranged forth bowls crowned with dark wine, and poured
To gods who everlastingly abide,

Most to the stern-eyed child of heaven's great lord.

All night the ship clave onward till the Dawn upsoared."