digious.

Whose genius but Herr Wagner's could have found employment for the
boomerangelungen? We hear talk of the sword motive, the love motive,
the Walhalla motive, and this motive, and that; but they all shrink
into nothingness when compared with the motive of the boomerangelungen.

THE WORKS OF SAPPHO

It would be hard to say whether Chicago society is more deeply
interested in the circus which is exhibiting on the lake-front this
week, than in the compilation of Sappho's complete works just published
in London, and but this week given to the trade in Chicago. As we
understand it, Sappho and the circus had their beginning about the same
time: if any thing, the origin of the circus antedated Sappho's birth
some years, and has achieved the more wide-spread popularity.

In the volume now before us, we learn that Sappho lived in the seventh
century before Christ, and that she was at the zenith of her fame at
the time when Tarquinius Priscus was king of Rome, and Nebuchadnezzar
was subsisting on a hay-diet. It appears that, despite her wisdom,
this talented lady did not know who her father was; seventeen hundred
years after her demise, one Suidas claimed to have discovered that
there were seven of her father; but Herodotus gives the name of the
gentleman most justly suspected as Scamandronymus. Be this as it may,
Sappho married a rich man, and subsequently fell in love with a dude
who cared nothing for her; whereupon the unfortunate woman, without
waiting to compile her writings, and without even indicating whom she
preferred for her literary executor, committed suicide by hurling
herself from a high precipice into the sea. Sappho was an exceedingly
handsome person, as we see by the engraving which serves as the
frontispiece of the work before us. This engraving, as we understand,
was made from a portrait painted from life by a contemporaneous old
Grecian artist, one Alma Tadema.

Still, we could not help wondering, as we saw the magnificent pageant
of Forepaugh's circus sweep down our majestic boulevards and superb
thoroughfares yesterday; as we witnessed this imposing spectacle, we
say, we could not help wondering how many people in all the vast crowds
of spectators knew that there ever was such a poetess as Sappho, or how
many, knowing that there was such a party, have ever read her works.
It has been nearly a year since a circus came to town; and in that time
public taste has been elevated to a degre