Oftentimes at Oxford I saw Levana in my dreams. I knew her by her Roman symbols. Who is Levana? Reader, that do not pretend to have leisure for very much scholarship, you will not be angry with me for telling you. Levana was the Roman goddess that performed for the new-born infant the earliest office of ennobling kindness,--typical, by its mode, of that grandeur which belongs to man everywhere, and of that benignity in powers invisible which even in pagan worlds sometimes descends to sustain it. At the very moment of birth, just as the infant tasted for the first time the atmosphere of our troubled planet, it was laid on the ground. _That_ might, bear different interpretations. But immediately, lest so grand a creature should grovel there for more than one instant, either the paternal hand as proxy for the goddess Levana, or some near kinsman as proxy for the father, raised it upright, bade it look erect as the king of all this world, and presented its forehead to the stars, saying perhaps in his heart, "Behold what is greater than yourselves!" This symbolic act represented the function of Levana. And that mysterious lady, who never revealed her face (except to me in dreams), but always acted by delegation, had her name from the Latin verb (as still it is the Italian verb) _levare_, to raise aloft. This is the explanation of Levana. And hence it has arisen that some people have understood by Levana the tutelary power that controls the education of the nursery. She that would not suffer at his birth even a prefigurative or mimic degradation for her awful ward, far less could be supposed to suffer the real degradation attaching to the non-development of his powers. She therefore watches over human education. Therefore it is that Levana often communes with the powers that shake man's heart: therefore it is that she dotes upon grief. "These ladies," said I softly to myself, on seeing the ministers with whom Levana was conversing, "these are the Sorrows; and they are three in number, as the _Graces_ are three, who dress man's life with beauty; the _Parcae_ are three, who weave the dark arras of man's life in their mysterious loom always with colors sad in part, sometimes angry with tragic crimson and black; the _Furies_ are three, who visit, with retributions called from the other side of the grave, offenses that walk upon this; and once even the _Muses_ were but three, who fit the harp, the trumpet, or the lute, to the great burdens of man's impassioned creations. These are the Sorrows, all three of whom I know." The last words I say _now_; but in Oxford I said, "One of whom I know, and the others too surely I _shall_ know." For already in my fervent youth I saw (dimly relieved upon the dark background of my dreams) the imperfect lineaments of the awful sisters. These sisters--by what name shall we call them?