If--laconic fate-word! hinge of destiny! _If_ the Persians had won at Marathon; and if the brilliant imagination of a Persian Herodotus had fixed in fame the glories of conquering Persia: _if_ the Peloponnesian War had not mutually destroyed the Grecian empire: _if_ Alexander the Great had lost the battles Granicus, Issus, Arbela; _if_ world-conquering Alexander the Great had been successful in the conquest of his own down-dragging human heart, and _if_ he had not died at Babylon, aged thirty-two, world-victor and self-victim: _if_ the village by the Tiber had not advanced by bloody strides o’er fixed-star battlefields from Rome a wilderness, to Rome Mistress of the World: _if_ the barbarous hordes of the North had not ever longingly before their eyes the fairyland of southern Europe, the troll-gardens of Italy: _if_ Rome had not become enervated; _if_ Gaul and Goth and Hun and Norseman had not won: _if_ the Crescent had waved victorious o’er a fallen Cross at Tours, Belgrade, Lepanto: if William of Normandy son of Robert the Devil, had been pierced by an arrow and buried indistinguishably among the dead on the slaughter-field of Senlac-Hastings--If! But we are a perennially hopeful race and happily unimaginative and dully content with the Real: and so we unquestioningly acquiesce when grave historians tell us that in each and every historic struggle the juggernaut determinant of the _If_ acted favorably to the best interests of civilization and progress: so, too, would we obligingly believe had the determinant favored the opposing cause. Perhaps to all-conquering Progress as to world-conquering Rome, all battles are victories; either as a victory proper with roll of triumph-drum and flash of conquering colors, or as that grim Cannæ-defeat potential of a future Zama-victory. It is well that there should be two possible interpretations of the answers of the oracle: thus is Truth ever serenely secure unperturbed by the errors of mortals. PEGASUS. It is hard to control the winged steed. His next flight and whereabouts of alighting are as happily unknown to the rider as to the beholder--to the writer as to the reader. However Pegasus, the real, can never fail to be interesting whether he leap over the historic ages, or play antics on an _If_, or neigh irreverently in the temple of Delphian Apollo, or speed to the finding of Harold Godwin amid the indistinguishably dead on the slaughter-field of Senlac-Hastings. ROLLO THE DANE. Vikings of the northern seas, wolf-men of the Sagas, dark devotees of Thor, heirs of Valkirie--little wonder that the semi-civilized world shuddered at their distant approach; little wonder that Charlemagne, hero of a hundred wars, grew sick at heart, foreseeing the rivers of blood that should deluge fair France, when, one day, by chance, his eagle gaze caught sight of the Dragon-Head long-boats of the Northmen as yet far off, red-glittering on shaggy northern seas.