that shakes the woods; and if it comes to a
matter of kissing, there are no "reluctant lips," but a smack that makes
the vales resound.

It is no Boucher we have here, nor Watteau: cosmetics and rosettes are
far away; tunics are short, and cheeks are nut-brown. It is Teniers,
rather:--boors, indeed; but they are live boors, and not manikin
shepherds.

I shall call out another Sicilian here, named Moschus, were it only
for his picture of a fine, sturdy bullock: it occurs in his "Rape of
Europa":--

"With yellow hue his sleekened body beams;
His forehead with a snowy circle gleams;
Horns, equal-bending, from his brow emerge,
And to a moonlight crescent orbing verge."

Nothing can be finer than the way in which this "milky steer," with
Europa on his back, goes sailing over the brine, his "feet all oars."
Meantime, she, the pretty truant,

"Grasps with one hand his curved projecting horn,
And with the other closely drawn compressed
The fluttering foldings of her purple vest,
Whene'er its fringed hem was dashed with dew
Of the salt sea-foam that in circles flew:
Wide o'er Europa's shoulders to the gale
The ruffled robe heaved swelling, like a sail."

Moschus is as rich as the Veronese at Venice; and his picture is truer
to the premium standard. The painting shows a pampered animal, with
over-red blotches on his white hide, and is by half too fat to breast
such "salt sea-foam" as flashes on the Idyl of Moschus.

Another poet, Aratus of Cilicia, whose very name has a smack of tillage,
has left us a book about the weather [Greek: Dosaemeia] which is
quite as good to mark down a hay-day by as the later meteorologies of
Professor Espy or Judge Butler.

Besides which, our friend Aratus holds the abiding honor of having been
quoted by St. Paul, in his speech to the Athenians on Mars Hill:--

"For in Him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of
your own poets have said: 'For we are also His offspring.'"

And Aratus, (after Elton,)--

"On thee our being hangs; in thee we move;
All are thy offspring, and the seed of Jove."

Scattered through the lesser Greek poets, and up and down the Anthology,
are charming bits of rurality, redolent of the fields and of field-life,
with which it would be easy to fill up the measure of this rainy day,
and beat off the Grecian couplets to the tinkle of the eave-drops. Up
and down, the cicada chirps; the locust, "encourager of sleep," sings