By head and shoulders towering o'er the throng?"
Merc. That's Milo of Crotona, the great wrestler. The Greeks are applauding him because he has just lifted a bull and is carrying it across the arena.
Cha. They'll have much better reason to applaud me, Mercury, when I get hold of Milo himself, as I shall do very shortly, and clap him on board my boat, when he comes down our way after having been thrown by that invincible wrestler, Death; no back-trick that he knows can manage him. He'll weep and groan then, we shall see, when he remembers all his laurels and triumphs; but now he is very proud because they all admire him for carrying the bull. Do you suppose, now, that man ever expects to die?
The visitor from the lower world, under Mercury's instruction, surveys many other scenes in human life. Space and Chronology are, of course, set entirely at defiance under the potent incantation which Mercury has borrowed from the poet—as they are, indeed, sometimes by poets themselves. He sees Cyrus planning his great expedition against Crœsus; overhears the latter monarch holding his celebrated conversation with Solon on the great question of human happiness; is shown the Scythian Tomyris on her white horse, the savage queen who is to give the Persian conqueror "his fill of blood." He sees the too fortunate Polycrates receiving back his lost ring from the fisherman,
and learns from his guide (who has heard it as a secret
