right"' and in many instances at least with all the culture of their time. The vast buildings make us sigh at the thought of wasted human labour, though there is a public usefulness too in some of these designs, such as the draining of the Copaic lake, to which the backs of the people are bent whether they will or not. For the princes there is much of that selfish personal luxury which is a constant trait of feudalism in [209] all ages. For the people, scattered over the country, at their agricultural labour, or gathered in small hamlets, there is some enjoyment, perhaps, of the aspect of that splendour, of the bright warriors on the heights--a certain share of the nobler pride of the tyrants themselves in those tombs and dwellings. Some surmise, also, there seems to have been, of the "curse" of gold, with a dim, lurking suspicion of curious facilities for cruelty in the command over those skilful artificers in metal-- some ingenious rack or bull "to pinch and peel"--the tradition of which, not unlike the modern Jacques Bonhomme's shudder at the old ruined French donjon or bastille, haunts, generations afterwards, the ruins of those "labyrinths" of stone, where the old tyrants had their pleasures. For it is a mistake to suppose that that wistful sense of eeriness in ruined buildings, to which most of us are susceptible, is an exclusively modern feeling. The name Cyclopean, attached to those desolate remains of buildings which were older than Greek history itself, attests their romantic influence over the fancy of the people who thus attributed them to a superhuman strength and skill. And the Cyclopes, like all the early mythical names of artists, have this note of reality, that they are names not of individuals but of classes, the guilds or companies of workmen in which a certain craft was imparted and transmitted. The Dactyli, the Fingers, are the [210] first workers in iron; the savage Chalybes in Scythia the first smelters; actual names are given to the old, fabled Telchines-- Chalkon, Argyron, Chryson--workers in brass, silver, and gold, respectively.+ The tradition of their activity haunts the several regions where those metals were found. They make the trident of Poseidon; but then Poseidon's trident is a real fisherman's instrument, the tunny-fork. They are credited, notwithstanding, with an evil sorcery, unfriendly to men, as poor humanity remembered the makers of chains, locks, Procrustean beds; and, as becomes this dark recondite mine and metal work, the traditions about them are gloomy and grotesque, confusing mortal workmen with demon guilds.