who never by any chance go anywhere, but either “wend” or “fare” when they are not engaged in “flitting”—a mysterious kind of locomotion which they sometimes achieve by means of “wains”—and who hold converse among themselves not in words but in “speech-lore,” which they at times condescend to speak, but very much prefer, when the rhyme will give them the ghost of a chance, “to waft” through “tooth-hedge” (_ore locutus_). In this mysterious region are neither times nor numbers, but only “tales” and “tides”; what would be mere tillers of the soil (_agricolæ_) in Virgil are here become “acre-biders” or “field-folk,” who for cattle have “merry, wholesome herds of neat” (_læta boum armenta_), and for horses “war-threatening herd-beasts.” Here things are rarely carried, but, like the “speech-lore” above spoken of, are “wafted” whenever humanly possible, and are never done or made when they can by any means be “dight.” Here we are puzzled to recognize our old friends, the Muses, under the disguise of “Song-maids”; we fairly cut those amiable sisters, the Furies, when they are introduced to us as the “Well-willers”; and of the heroes who roar and ruffle so gallantly through the battlefields of the _Æneid_ we have scarcely a glimpse, but instead a “tale” of “lads of war,” “begirded” with “war-gear” and led by “Dukes of man,” who are for ever falling on and smiting or being smitten by a “sort of fellows” dight in “war-weeds,” who fare around in “war-wains” and “deal out iron-bane” (_dant funera ferro_) with “shot-spears” or “weapon-smiths” and “wound-smiths” instead of simple javelins and swords. Following Mr. Morris’ lead, in short, we find ourselves in a land where Virgil would be as much at home as he would in Asgard or Valhalla, or as the hero Beowulf might be in Elysium. It is a pleasant land enough in its way, and the folk are entertaining folk, but we feel that we have left the _Æneid_ behind us.