ling with his pupils about fees, and the Cynic in very bad company. For the rest, the world was going on much as he supposed; the Egyptians were busy cultivating their fields, the Phœnicians making their merchant voyages, the Spartans whipping their children, und the Athenians, as usual, in the law-courts.[1] "Such," says the traveller, "is the confused jumble of this world. It is as though one should hire a multitude of singers, or rather bands of singers, and then bid each performer choose his own tune, caring nothing for the harmony; each singing his loudest, and going on with his own song, and trying to drown his neighbour's voice—you may judge what music that would make. Even such, my friend, are the performers on earth, and such is the confused discord which makes up human life; they not only sound different notes, but move in imharmonious time and figure, with no common idea or purpose; until the choirmaster drives them all from the stage, and says he has no more need of them." He wondered, too, and could not forbear smiling, at the quarrels which arise between men about their little strips of territory, when to his eyes, as he looked down, "all Greece was but four fingers' breadth." It reminded him of "a swarm of ants running round and round and in and out of their city,—one turning over a bit of dung, another seizing a bean-shell, or half a
- ↑ A reminiscence of Aristophanes, who is never weary of satirising the passion of his fellow-citizens for law. In his "Clouds" (l. 280), where Strepsiades is shown Athens on the map, he exclaims—
"Athens! go to! I see no law-courts sitting."
