The Nile, with his sixteen children, is of this same class[244]. The child that reaches the ears of corn, and the fruits, in his Cornu, is the symbol of the highest fertility; but those that over-reach them are signs of miscarrying seasons. Pliny explains the whole[245]. Egypt is at the height of its fertility, when the Nile rises sixteen feet: but if it either falls short of, or exceeds that measure, it equally blasts the land with unfruitfulness. Rossi, in his collection, neglected the children. Satyrical pictures belong also to this class: the Ass of Gabrias, for instance[246], which imagines itself worshipped by the people, as they bow to the statue of Isis on its back. It is impossible to give a livelier image of the pride of the Vulgar-Great. The sublimer allegory might be supplied by the lower class, had it not met with the same fate. We are, for instance, not acquainted with the figure of Eloquence, or _Peitho_; or that of the Goddess of Comfort, _Parergon_, represented by Praxiteles, as Pausanias tells us[247]. Oblivion had an altar among the Romans[248], and perhaps a figure: as may also be supposed of Chastity, whose altar is to be found on coins[249]; and of Fear, to which Theseus offered sacrifices[250]. However, the remains of ancient allegory are not yet worn out: there are still many secret stores: the poets, and other monuments of antiquity, afford numbers of beautiful images. Those, who in our time, and that of our fathers, were busy in improving allegory, and in facilitating the endeavours of the artists; those, I say, should reasonably have had recourse to so rich and pure a fountain. But there was an epoch to appear, in which a shocking croud of pedants should, with downright madness, conspire in an universal uproar against every the lead glimpse of good taste. Nature, in their eyes, was puerile, and ought to be fashioned: blockheads, both young and old, vied in painting devices and emblems, for the benefit of artists, philosophers, and divines; and woe to him who made a compliment, without dressing it up in an emblem! Symbols void of sense were illustrated with inscriptions, giving an account of what they meant, and meant not: these are the treasures which are dug for, even in our times, and which, being then in high fashion, out-shone all antiquity had left.