degrading--but always wonderful (she puts the stores on board the ship invisibly, and is gone again, like a ghost); even the wild beasts rejoice and are softened around her cave; to men, she gives no rich feast, nothing but pure and right nourishment,--Pramnian wine, cheese and flour; that is corn, milk, and wine, the three great sustainers of life--it is their own fault if these make swine of them; and swine are chosen merely as the type of consumption; as Plato's [Greek: huon polis] in the second book of the "Polity," and perhaps chosen by Homer with a deeper knowledge of the likeness of nourishment, and internal form of body. "Et quel est, s'il vous plait, cet audacieux animal qui se permet d'etre bati au dedans comme une jolie petite fille?" "Helas! chere enfant, j'ai honte de le nommer, et il ne foudra pas m'en vouloir. C'est ... c'est le cochon. Ce n'est pas precisement flatteur pour vous; mais nous en sommes tous la, et si cela vous contrarie par trop, il faut aller vous plaindre au bon Dieu qui a voulu que les choses fussent arrangees ainsi: seulement le cochon, qui ne pense qu' a manger, a l'estomac bien plus vaste que nous, et c'est toujours une consolation." ("Histoire d'une Bouchee de Pain," Lettre ix.) But the deadly Sirens are all things opposed to the Circean power. They promise pleasure, but never give it. They nourish in no wise; but slay by slow death. And whereas they corrupt the heart and the head, instead of merely betraying the senses, there is no recovery from their power; they do not tear nor snatch, like Scylla, but the men who have listened to them are poisoned, and waste away. Note that the Sirens' field is covered, not merely with the bones, but with the skins of those who have been consumed there. They address themselves, in the part of the song which Homer gives, not to the passions of Ulysses, but to his vanity, and the only man who ever came within hearing of them, and escaped untempted, was Orpheus, who silenced the vain imaginations by singing the praises of the gods. It is, then, one of these Sirens whom Dante takes as the phantasm or deceitfulness of riches; but note further, that she says it was her song that deceived Ulysses. Look back to Dante's account of Ulysses' death, and we find it was not the love of money, but pride of knowledge, that betrayed him; whence we get the clue to Dante's complete meaning: that the souls whose love of wealth is pardonable have been first deceived into pursuit of it by a dream of its higher uses, or by ambition. His Siren is therefore the Philotime of Spenser, daughter of Mammon--