"As to present events, then, it may be assumed that no one is either capable or desirous of speaking the truth; why, then, make such a pother about it as to the past? There we have carried the investigation of truth to such an extreme that nowadays very few of us dare believe anything. Opinions are difficult to secure when a quarter of an hour in the library will prove either side of any question. Formerly, people had a few opinions, which, if erroneous, were at least universal. Nero was not considered an immaculate man. The Flood was currently believed to have caused the death of quite a number of persons. And George Washington, it was widely stated, once cut down a cherry-tree. But now all these comfortable illusions have been destroyed by 'the least little men who spend their time and lose their wits in chasing nimble and retiring truth, to the extreme perturbation and drying up of the moistures.'" Kennaston looked up for a moment, and Billy Woods, who had counted seven wrinkles and was dropping into a forlorn doze, started violently. His interest then became abnormal. "There are," Mr. Kennaston complained, rather reproachfully, "too many inquiries, doubts, investigations, discoveries, and apologies. There are palliations of Tiberius, eulogies of Henry VIII., rehabilitations of Aaron Burr. Lucretia Borgia, it appears, was a grievously misunderstood woman, and Heliogabalus a most exemplary monarch; even the dog in the manger may have been a nervous animal in search of rest and quiet. As for Shakespeare, he was an atheist, a syndicate, a lawyer's clerk, an inferior writer, a Puritan, a scholar, a _nom de plume_, a doctor of medicine, a fool, a poacher, and another man of the same name. Information of this sort crops up on every side. Even the newspapers are infected; truth lurks in the patent-medicine advertisements, and sometimes creeps stealthily into the very editorials. We must all learn the true facts of history, whether we will or no; eventually, the writers of historical romance will not escape. "So the sad tale goes. Ignorance--beautiful, divine Ignorance--is forsaken by a generation that clamours for the truth. The earnest-minded person has plucked Zeus out of Heaven, and driven the Maenad from the wood, and dragged Poseidon out of his deep-sea palace. The conclaves of Olympus, it appears, are merely nature-myths; the stately legends clustering about them turn out to be a rather elaborate method of expressing the fact that it occasionally rains. The heroes who endured their angers and jests and tragic loves are delicately veiled allusions to the sun--surely, a very harmless topic of conversation, even in Greece; and the monsters, 'Gorgons and Hydras and Chimæras dire,' their grisly offspring, their futile opponents, are but personified frosts. Mythology--the poet's necessity, the fertile mother of his inventions--has become a series of atmospheric phenomena, and the labours of Hercules prove to be a dozen weather bulletins.