She is older than the chestnuts of Vallombrosa. Perhaps of all the ancient goddesses time has chilled her least. Her unfathomable smile wears a touch of something sinister in it, but she has a new meaning for every generation. And yet for Aretino there was some further magic of crimson on her lips and cheeks, lost for us. She is a solecism for the convalescent, and has given consolation to the brave. She has been a diver in rather deep seas and a climber in somewhat steep places. Her censers are the smoking-rooms of clubs; and her presence-lamps are schoolboys' lanterns. Though held the friend of liars and brutes, she has lived on the indelicacies of kings, and has made even pontiffs laugh. Her mysteries are told in the night-time, and in low whispers to the garish day. She lingers over the stable-yard (no doubt called _mews_ for that reason). Her costly breviaries, embellished with strange illuminations, are prohibited under Lord Campbell's Act. Stars mark the places where she has been. Sometimes a scholar's fallacy, a sworn foe to Dr. Bowdler, she is Notre Dame de Milet, our Lady of Limerick. * * * * * But it is of her sister I would speak, the thirteenth sister, who was created to keep the eleventh in countenance. She presides over the absurdities of prose. She is responsible for the stylistic flights of Pegasus when, owing to the persuasive eloquence of the Hon. Stephen Coleridge, his bearing-rein has been abolished, and he kicks over the traces. It was the Elethian Muse who inspired that Oxford undergraduate's peroration to his essay on the Characteristics of St. John's Gospel-- 'Furthermore, we may add that St. John's Gospel is characterised by a tone of fervent piety which is totally wanting in those of the other Evangelists'-- and she hovered over the journalist who, writing for a paper which we need not name, referred to Bacchus as 'that deity whose identity in Greek and Roman mythology is inseparably connected with the over-indulgence of intoxicating liquors.' There are prose beauties, Elethian jewels, hidden away in Baedeker's mines of pregnant information and barren fact. I know it is fashionable to sneer at Baedeker, especially when you are writing little rhapsodies about remoter parts of Italy, where you have found his knowledge indispensable, if exiguous. You must always kick away the ladder when you arrive at literary distinction. I, who am still climbing and still clinging, can afford to be more generous. Let me, therefore, crown Baedeker with an essayist's parsley, or an academic laurel, ere I too become selfish, forgetful, egoistical, and famous. In _Southern France_, 1891 edition, p. 137, you find-- To the Pic de Nere, 3.75 hrs. from Luz, there and back 6.5 hrs.; a delightful excursion, which can be made on horseback part of the way: guide 12, horse 10 fr.; _adders abound_.