ÆSOP.—The great fabulist of Greece, and indeed of all time, was Æsop. Born a Phrygian slave about 620 B.C., he passed from one master to another till at last his wit gained him freedom. Thus left to choose his own course, he became a student in foreign lands. Athens was his home for a number of years; and there, in his well-known fable of “the Frogs asking Jupiter for a King,” he read a lesson both to Pisistratus the Tyrant and to the people who imagined themselves oppressed under his government. By special invitation, Æsop spent some time at the court of Crœsus. Here he made the acquaintance of Solon, who had incurred that monarch’s displeasure by speaking lightly of his vaunted wealth; and he is said to have admonished the Athenian sage that a wise man should resolve either not to converse with kings at all, or to converse with them agreeably.”—“Nay,” replied Solon, “he should either not converse with them at all, or converse with them usefully.” Crœsus commissioned Æsop to go to Delphi for the purpose of sacrificing to Apollo and distributing a sum of money among the citizens. But Æsop quarrelled with the Delphians, and taking it upon himself to withhold from them the Lydian gold, was seized by the enraged people and hurled from a precipice. Legend says that the murderers brought upon themselves the vengeance of heaven in the form of mysterious plagues. While these particulars of Æsop’s life rest on rather dubious authority, it is certain that as a fable-writer he was deservedly appreciated in ancient Greece. At Athens, Æsop’s Fables became indispensable to a polite education. Their author does not appear to have committed them to writing; they passed from mouth to mouth for generations, undergoing more or less change. Hence we have left only the substance of those pointed stories over which the Athenians went into transports, and which Socrates amused himself by turning into verse during his imprisonment. The young folks of every age, with whom Æsop has always been a favorite, would applaud the Athenians for placing the statue of the world’s great fabulist before those of their Seven Sages. When the people of Samos were on the point of executing a public officer who had robbed the treasury, they were induced to spare the offender by Æsop’s spicy fable of THE FOX AND THE HEDGEHOG. A Fox, while crossing a river, was driven by the stream into a narrow gorge, and lay there for a long time unable to get out, covered with myriads of horse-flies that had fastened upon him. A Hedgehog, who was wandering in that direction, saw him, and taking compassion on him, asked if he should drive away the flies that were so tormenting him. But the Fox begged him to do nothing of the sort. “Why not?” asked the Hedgehog.