on
thee till now: but have wandered at my own discretion, to myself a
blind guide, erring up and down the world, wanting thee."

Then Minerva cleared his eyes, and he knew the ground on which he
stood to be Ithaca, and that cave to be the same which the people of
Ithaca had in former times made sacred to the sea-nymphs, and where he
himself had done sacrifices to them a thousand times; and full in his
view stood Mount Nerytus with all his woods: so that now he knew for a
certainty that he was arrived in his own country, and with the delight
which he felt he could not forbear stooping down and kissing the soil.

CHAPTER VIII

_The change from a king to a beggar.--Eumaeus and the
herdsmen.--Telemachus._

Not long did Minerva suffer him to indulge vain transports, but
briefly recounting to him the events which had taken place in Ithaca
during his absence, she shewed him that his way to his wife and throne
did not lie so open, but that before he were reinstated in the secure
possession of them, he must encounter many difficulties. His palace,
wanting its king, was become the resort of insolent and imperious men,
the chief nobility of Ithaca and of the neighbouring isles, who, in
the confidence of Ulysses being dead, came as suitors to Penelope.
The queen (it was true) continued single, but was little better than
a state-prisoner in the power of these men, who under a pretence of
waiting her decision, occupied the king's house, rather as owners
than guests, lording and domineering at their pleasure, profaning the
palace, and wasting the royal substance, with their feasts and mad
riots. Moreover the goddess told him how fearing the attempts of these
lawless men upon the person of his young son Telemachus, she herself
had put it into the heart of the prince, to go and seek his father in
far countries; how in the shape of Mentor she had borne him company in
his long search; which, though failing, as she meant it should fail,
in its first object, had yet had this effect, that through hardships
he had learned endurance, through experience he had gathered wisdom,
and wherever his footsteps had been, he had left such memorials, of
his worth, as the fame of Ulysses's son was already blown throughout
the world. That it was now not many days since Telemachus had arrived
in the island, to the great joy of the queen his mother, who had
thought him dead, by reason of his long absence, and had begun to
mourn for him with a