s of Hellas. There actually
is a tradition, preserved by Eustathius, that Paris beguiled Helen
by magically putting on the aspect of Menelaus. There is a mediaeval
parallel in the story of Uther and Ygerne, mother of Arthur, and
the classical case of Zeus and Amphitryon is familiar. Again, the
blood-dripping ruby of Helen, in the tale, is mentioned by Servius in
his commentary on Virgil (it was pointed out to one of the authors
by Mr. Mackail). But we did not know that the Star of the story was
actually called the "Star-stone" in ancient Greek fable. The many voices
of Helen are alluded to by Homer in the _Odyssey_: she was also named
_Echo_, in old tradition. To add that she could assume the aspect of
every man's first love was easy. Goethe introduces the same quality
in the fair witch of his _Walpurgis Nacht_. A respectable portrait of
Meriamun's secret counsellor exists, in pottery, in the British Museum,
though, as it chances, it was not discovered by us until after the
publication of this romance. The Laestrygonian of the Last Battle is
introduced as a pre-historic Norseman. Mr. Gladstone, we think, was
perhaps the first to point out that the Laestrygonians of the _Odyssey_,
with their home on a fiord in the Land of the Midnight Sun, were
probably derived from travellers' tales of the North, borne with the
amber along the immemorial Sacred Way. The Magic of Meriamun is in
accordance with Egyptian ideas; her resuscitation of the dead woman,
Hataska, has a singular parallel in Reginald Scot's _Discovery of
Witchcraft_ (1584), where the spell "by the silence of the Night" is not
without poetry. The general conception of Helen as the World's Desire,
Ideal Beauty, has been dealt with by M. Paul de St. Victor, and Mr. J.
A. Symonds. For the rest, some details of battle, and of wounds, which
must seem very "un-Greek" to critics ignorant of Greek literature, are
borrowed from Homer.

H. R. H. A. L.

THE WORLD'S DESIRE

by H. Rider Haggard and Andrew Lang

Come with us, ye whose hearts are set
On this, the Present to forget;
Come read the things whereof ye know
_They were not, and could not be so!_
The murmur of the fallen creeds,
Like winds among wind-shaken reeds
Along the banks of holy Nile,
Shall echo in your ears the while;
The fables of the North and South
Shall mingle in a modern mouth;
The fancies of the West and East
Shall flock and flit