That is all history has been, will ever be, the swaying tides of a human sea, now toward Asia, toward Europe. History is a wave lifted by cosmic urge. Today they go to battle wearing hideous clothing and disguising head gear. In the old days they moved in the pomp of purple and gold, semi-naked and splendid, glittering with gems, under canopies of crocus silk, while clarions shrieked and long plumes caressed the air. Go refresh your eyes with a picture of it upon the bronze pages of Xenophon! It is fortunate it was written in bronze. Otherwise it might fade. How lonely will they be in that new, scientific, commercially-minded future, so rapidly approaching, whose eyes have kept a memory of the picture which was the past. The scholiast of Aristophanes tells us, among other interesting things, that Timandra, who was born at Hykkara, in Sicily, was given by the Tyrant Dionysius, to Philoxenus, the poet. With Philoxenus he goes on to say, she journeyed farther. She came at length as far as Corinth. Here she lived for a considerable time and was beloved of many. This is the kind of novel I like, one that I can expand at leisure, to suit myself, one that unfolds long, radiant, geographical vistas. In 1843, De Musset published a book called _Voyage ou il vous plaira_, (_Travel Wherever You Wish_). How I should like that! And how I now wish it were a part of life realized. In fancy I shall see the antique world. The notes of the scholiasts contain fascinating information. “... _of the wind always louder and bleaker, of the black roaring winters, of the gloom of high-lying old stone cities, imminent on the windy seaboard._” This quotation from Stevenson’s _Edinburgh, Picturesque Notes_ illustrates something not unworthy notice. Its beauty, which no one will dispute, is not a spiritual question, nor one of mind wholly. It is founded upon the flesh. Stylists play with vowels, with consonants, just as the pianist plays with black and white keys of his instrument. He, indeed, is not a dissimilar musician. To return to the sentence in question. The underlined letters, _i_, _a_, _oo_, in the words _wind_, _black_ and _gloom_ mean the opening wider and wider of the back of the throat to emit sound, going from a short _i_, to long _oo_, a skillful climax, a physical emotion where muscles of the body are the instrument played upon. The use of alternating vowels is remarkable. It is witchery. After height of stressed sound is reached in the word _gloom_, he glides gently down to rest, satisfied sound-completeness, in the slightly muted final _s_ of the word _cities_. The sentence gives pleasant sense of slipping quietly into a blue, smiling harbor, after storm. Stevenson performed miracles in handling sound. His verse, however, was merely graceful, which is a word good to apply to him.