indulging in details relative to the habits and appearances of the various strange animals found in that country--the crocodile, the hippopotamus, and the elephant, are described with considerable spirit and fidelity; and even the form and colours of the fabulous phoenix, are delineated with all the confidence of an eyewitness. Many of these episodical sketches, though out of place when thus awkwardly inserted in the midst of the narrative, are in themselves curious and well written; but the most valuable and interesting among them are the frequent descriptions of paintings, a specimen of which has already been given. On this subject especially, the author dwells _con amore_, and his remarks are generally characterised by a degree of good taste and correct feeling, which indicates a higher degree of appreciation of the pictorial art than is generally ascribed to the age in which Achilles Tatius wrote. Even in the latter part of the first century of our era, Pliny, when enumerating the glorious names of the ancient Greek painters, laments over the total decline, in his own days, of what he terms (_Nat. Hist_. xxxv. 11) "an aspiring art;" but the monarchs of the Macedonian dynasties in Asia, and, above all, the Egyptian Ptolemies, were both munificent patrons of the fine arts among their own subjects, and diligent collectors of the great works of past ages; and many of the _chefs-d'oeuvres_ of the Grecian masters were thus transferred from their native country to adorn, the temples and palaces of Egypt and Syria. We find, from Plutarch, that when Aratus was exerting himself to gain for the Achæan league the powerful alliance of Ptolemy Euergetes, he found no means so effectual in conciliating the good-will of the monarch, as the procuring for him some of the master-pieces of Pamphilus[7] and Melanthius, the most renowned of the famous school of Sicyon; and the knowledge of the high estimation in which the arts were held, under the Egyptian kings, gives an additional value to the accounts given by Tatius of these treasures of a past age, his notices of which are the latest, in point of time, which have come down to us from an eyewitness. We have already quoted the author's vivid description of the painting of Europa at Sidon--we shall now subjoin, as a pendant to the former notice, his remarks on a pair of pictures at Pelusium:-- [7] Pamphilus was a Macedonian by birth, and a pupil of Eupompus, the founder of the school of Sicyon; to the presidency of which he succeeded. His pupils paid each a talent a year for instruction; and Melanthius, and even Apelles himself, for a time, were among the number.--Pliny, _Hist. Nat_. xxxv. 36. The great talent of Melanthius, like that of his master Pamphilus, lay in composition and grouping; and so highly were his pictures esteemed, that Pliny, in another passage, says, that the wealth of a city would hardly purchase one.