Neither do I think that I can claim to have had any particular love for the classics; but I was blest with a pictorial mind, and though much of my classical reading was a mere weariness to me, I was cheered at intervals by a sudden romantic glimpse of some scene or other that seized me with a vivid reality. The Odyssey and the Æneid were rich in these surprises; for the talk of Gods, indeed, I had nothing but bewildered contempt; but such a scene as that of Laertes in his patched gaiters, fumbling with a young tree on his upland farm, at once seized tyrannically upon my fancy. Catullus, Horace, even Martial, gave me occasional food for the imagination; and all at once it seemed worth while to traverse the arid leagues, or to wade, as Tennyson said, in a sea of glue, for these divine moments. One such scene that affected my fancy I will describe in greater detail; and let it stand as a specimen. It was in the third Æneid; we were sitting in a dusty class-room, the gas flaring. The lesson proceeded slowly and wearily, with a thin trickle of exposition from the desk, emanating from a master who was evidently as sick of the whole business as ourselves. Andromache, widow of Hector, after a forced union with Neoptolemus, becomes the bride of Helenus, Hector’s brother. Helenus on the death of Pyrrhus becomes his successor in the chieftainship, and Andromache is once more a queen. She builds a rustic altar, an excuse for lamentation, and there bewails the memory of her first lord. I was reflecting that she must have made but a dreary wife for Helenus, when in a moment the scene was changed. Æneas, it will be remembered, comes on her in her orisons, with his troop of warriors behind him, and is greeted by the terrified queen, who believes him to be an apparition, with a wild and artless question ending a burst of passionate grief: “If you come from the world of spirits,” she says, “Hector ubi est?” It is one of those sudden turns that show the ineffable genius of Virgil. I saw in a moment a clearing in a wood of beeches; one great tree stood out from the rest. Half hidden in the foliage stood a tall stone pillar, supporting a mouldering urn. Close beside this was a stone alcove, with a little altar beneath it. In the alcove stood a silent listening statue with downcast head. From the altar went up a little smoke; the queen herself, a slender figure, clad in black, with pale worn face and fragile hands, bent in prayer. By her side were two maidens, also in the deepest black, a priest in stiff vestments, and a boy bearing a box of incense. [Sidenote: VIRGIL]