" WITH THE IMMORTALS." Fro THE EDITOR or THE ..SrretkTon."]
SIR,—The taking of in-tea from the classics is doubtless an idle and superstitious practice. Still, the following series of sortes may strike you, as it struck me, as uncannily appro- priate. Sitting beside the fire this morning, I was thinking that the books in a shelf over the mantelpiece needed re- arrangement. Chesterton's What', Wrong with the World ? stood next to Vergil and Sophocles. Suddenly the fancy took me to make a Fors Vcrgiliana answer the grimly apposite question of Chesterton'a title-phrase. Result Aen., X., 80 " Paean orare menu, praefigere puppibus arma."
That was sufficiently to the point. I was tempted further. Why should not Sophocles read us a lesson on the fate of the forsworn ? My finger fell upon Oedipus Tgrannus, the chorus
463-474:—
'Vs &TIP' OfETIrdiffiE AeAgels fire rbrpa OAT' iti3ATrov Talaarra Ootrfatcri wall, • Sips pip IteNAGOcuy
frircoy crOEvappirepor
epiryi 748a yoaaiv. Ivoirxos 74 ill= CitiTbY iirevOpo50-set irupl nal crrEporais 6 bibs licp&ar• Seival 8' da' grovTai
Kiipes ararAdsnToi.
This was exciting. I called on Homer to tell me how the vengeance should be accomplished. His answer came in the words of Odyssey, H, 124-126 :— Wpm 8' tipa TE Tp1/74COPIV, lihAar rpadoucre irdpoith Si T' ekapases einr dyper etinteirral, W1-fpai Irmoreptccicovaw.
Not much imagination is needed to see in the grapes of Alcinous' vineyard the young and old in the press of war. ,And the upshot of it all P The Father of Iiistory surely could
tell me that—and the answer of Herodotus came pat, VI., 83 :—
"apyes 2eySpcZp exnpcan oiSTco 6hTTE ul 800X0i a6T031., g(TX01, ird),Ta Ta iriniracpra tipxoras TE /CO SthrOYTES, es ii bronfrcu! Oi TIDY asoAo.. Advau, ircri6es.
Is internal revolution in Germany to end the war after all P I took no other cartes. These were all taken absolutely at random, and in the order in which I give them. They seem to me to hang together very well; and I have since noticed that Marion Crawford's With the Immortals stands on the other side of What's Wrong with the World am, Sir, &c.,
S. C. KAINES SMITH
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