CHARON'S VISIT TO THE UPPER WORLD.
This is one of the author's best pieces, and though classed amongst the miscellaneous Dialogues, may very well find a place here. The dramatis personæ are the same, and the contrast between the world of the living and the world of ghosts is still the theme.
MERCURY AND CHARON.
Mercury. What are you laughing about, Charon? And what has made you leave your boat and come up here into our parts? You don't very often favour us with a visit.
Charon. Well, I had a fancy, Master Mercury, to see what kind of a thing human life was, and what men do in the world, and what it is that they have to leave behind them, that they all bemoan themselves so when they come down our way. For you know that never a one of them makes the voyage without tears. So I begged leave of absence from Pluto, just for a day, like Protesilaus, and came up here into the daylight. And I think myself very lucky in falling in with you; you'll be good enough to act as my guide, I know, and go round with me and show me everything—you know all about it.
Merc. Really, Mr Ferryman, I can't spare time. I have to go off to do an errand for Jupiter upon earth. He's very irascible, and if I loiter on the road, I fear he may banish me entirely into your dark dominions, or do to me as he did to Vulcan lately,—take me by the
