d the sage, and confiscate the Elixir.
Failing to obtain admission at Aboniel's portal, they broke it open, and,
on entering his chamber, found him in a condition which more eloquently
than any profession bespoke his disdain for the life-bestowing draught. He
was dead in his chair. Before him, on the table, stood the seven phials,
six full as previously, the seventh empty. In his hand was a scroll
inscribed as follows:

"Six times twice six years have I striven after knowledge, and I now
bequeath to the world the fruit of my toil, being six poisons. One more
deadly I might have added, but I have refrained, "Write upon my tomb, that
here he lies who forbore to perpetuate human affliction, and bestowed a
fatal boon where alone it could be innoxious."

The intruders looked at each other, striving to penetrate the sense of
Aboniel's last words. While yet they gazed, they were startled by a loud
crash from an adjacent closet, and were even more discomposed as a large
monkey bounded forth, whose sleek coat, exuberant playfulness, and
preternatural agility convinced all that the deceased philosopher, under an
inspiration of supreme irony, had administered to the creature every drop
of the Elixir of Life.

THE POET OF PANOPOLIS

I

Although in a manner retired from the world during the fifth and sixth
Christian centuries, the banished Gods did not neglect to keep an eye on
human affairs, interesting themselves in any movement which might seem to
afford them a chance of regaining their lost supremacy, or in any person
whose conduct evinced regret at their dethronement. They deeply sympathised
with the efforts of their votary Pamprepius to turn the revolt of Illus to
their advantage, and excused the low magical arts to which he stooped as a
necessary concession to the spirit of a barbarous age. They ministered
invisibly to Damascius and his companions on their flight into Persia,
alleviating the hardships under which the frames of the veteran
philosophers might otherwise have sunk. It was not, indeed, until the
burning of the Alexandrian library that they lost all heart and lapsed into
the chrysalis-like condition in which they remained until tempted forth by
the young sunshine of the Renaissance.

Such a phenomenon for the fifth century as the Dionysiaca of Nonnus of
Panopolis could not fail to excite their most lively interest. Forty-eight
books of verse on the exploits of Bacchus in the age of pugnacious pre