of the Fight that yet sleeps, at the next instant to wake, convulsing sea and air--spectators to every single combatant, of his individual heroism. What did that late conqueror of ancient Egypt and what did his fiery warriors understand, when going into battle he said to them--"Forty Centuries look down on you from the summit of yonder Pyramids?" These plains, for four thousand years, have belonged to History. See to it, that the page which you are about adding shall be, for your part, luminous with glory and victory, not "Black with dishonour, and foul with retreat." Suppose that he had said, "Forty Centuries _to come_ gaze upon you." The Pyramids seem likely to hold their own in such a reckoning. Perhaps the stretch of time is too long for the imagination of the Gallic Soldier. But surely, so speaking, he had spoken more from his heart and less from his imagination; for _he_ meditated the ages to come, not the ages gone by. To leave a name that shall sound, for good or for ill, loud-echoing from century to century--a name to be heard, when Cæsar, and Alexander, and Hannibal are commemorated--a name insubmergible by the waves of time--inextinguishable by the mists of oblivion--_that_ he desired, and _that_ has he not won? Horace has hung his name too in imagination on the structures of the Cheopses. But how different is the "Exegi monumentum ære perennius, Regalique situ Pyramidum altius" of the Poet! Horace indeed was already safe in pronouncing Homer immortal, with all the heroes upon whom he had conferred the gift. A thousand years! And the portentous strain, with all its Gods and Goddesses, and Kings and Queens, and Men and Women--fresh, bright, vivid, and fragrant, warm and yet reverberating from the Harp--as if the _plectrum_ of the sublime Bard were but that moment withdrawn from the strings--as if the breast that first poured the strain were yet throbbing with quicker emotion--stirred by the pulsating chords and by the words which itself chanted. Horace might well understand the immortality of the Poet. That he claimed it, and judiciously, for himself--he who sung so differently, the sweet, the sprightly, some loftier notes too--but afar from Homer--suggests a reflection upon the nature of durability. The works were born of Love; and by Love they live, for in them the Love lives. _Spirat adhuc amor._ Those Egyptian, star-contemplating, and star-contemplated Edifices, quarried from the Rock, stand; integral parts of the Planet, immovable--immutable. That is one manner of enduring. Sound is awakened. For an instant it flits through the air and ceases, extinct in silence. Add Love, and you have informed sound with duration--another manner of enduring. The mountain of piled rocks and a touch on the air are become rivals in duration, and we say they will last for ever. * * * * * _Printed by William Blackwood & Sons, Edinburgh._ FOOTNOTES: