lanterns. Though held the friend of liars and brutes, she
has lived on the indelicacies of kings, and has made even pontiffs laugh.
Her mysteries are told in the night-time, and in low whispers to the
garish day. She lingers over the stable-yard (no doubt called _mews_ for
that reason). Her costly breviaries, embellished with strange
illuminations, are prohibited under Lord Campbell's Act. Stars mark the
places where she has been. Sometimes a scholar's fallacy, a sworn foe to
Dr. Bowdler, she is Notre Dame de Milet, our Lady of Limerick.

* * * * *

But it is of her sister I would speak, the thirteenth sister, who was
created to keep the eleventh in countenance. She presides over the
absurdities of prose. She is responsible for the stylistic flights of
Pegasus when, owing to the persuasive eloquence of the Hon. Stephen
Coleridge, his bearing-rein has been abolished, and he kicks over the
traces.

It was the Elethian Muse who inspired that Oxford undergraduate's
peroration to his essay on the Characteristics of St. John's Gospel--

'Furthermore, we may add that St. John's Gospel is characterised by a
tone of fervent piety which is totally wanting in those of the other
Evangelists'--

and she hovered over the journalist who, writing for a paper which we
need not name, referred to Bacchus as

'that deity whose identity in Greek and Roman mythology is inseparably
connected with the over-indulgence of intoxicating liquors.'

There are prose beauties, Elethian jewels, hidden away in Baedeker's
mines of pregnant information and barren fact. I know it is fashionable
to sneer at Baedeker, especially when you are writing little rhapsodies
about remoter parts of Italy, where you have found his knowledge
indispensable, if exiguous. You must always kick away the ladder when
you arrive at literary distinction. I, who am still climbing and still
clinging, can afford to be more generous. Let me, therefore, crown
Baedeker with an essayist's parsley, or an academic laurel, ere I too
become selfish, forgetful, egoistical, and famous.

In _Southern France_, 1891 edition, p. 137, you find--

To the Pic de Nere, 3.75 hrs. from Luz, there and back 6.5 hrs.; a
delightful excursion, which can be made on horseback part of the way:
guide 12, horse 10 fr.; _adders abound_.

For synthetic prose you will have to go to Tacitus to find the equal of
that passage. No more is heard of the excursion. 'We lea