human, half divine." These extravagant legends of
poetic history impress us as having, perhaps, some foundation in truth.
It is not falsehood which tradition seeks to perpetuate. Possibility, if
not probability, is required of the wildest romancers. Truth and fable
run in nearly parallel lines. Jules Verne, when he wrote some of his
seemingly extravagant stories, scarcely thought that he was simply
anticipating possible circumstances which would so soon become
realities. The reading world hardly believed that his "Round the World
in Eighty Days" was strictly within the lines of truth; yet that record
has been reduced.

Malta is known to have been the vassal of ten different nationalities.
What the character of these various dynasties may have been can only be
conjectured. There are no records extant by which we can learn aught in
detail concerning them. A few half-ruined monuments, a series of rock
tombs, the debris of mouldering temples, or a nearly obliterated
underground city, "rich with the spoils of time,"--these are significant
suggestions which the student of the past in vain essays to translate
into coherency. The most casual visitor is moved to thoughtfulness as he
contemplates these half-effaced tokens of a long dead and buried race,
who had no Froissart to hand down their story through the lengthening
vista of ages. First came the Phoenicians, who were here many
centuries before the birth of Christ, and who were the earliest known
colonists of Malta. Their sovereignty is believed to have extended
through a period of seven hundred years. Greeks, Carthaginians, Romans,
Goths, and Arabs succeeded each other in the order in which they are
named, followed by German, Spanish, French, and English possessors, the
latter having maintained an uninterrupted mastership since the beginning
of the present century. To a nation whose naval supremacy is its
greatest pride, and which already holds Gibraltar, the key to the
Mediterranean, the holding of Malta is of inestimable importance. With
these facts in view, it is not surprising that its security is so
jealously guarded by England. Perhaps the boastful threat of the first
Napoleon, that he would make of the Mediterranean a French lake, has not
yet been forgotten. At present it is strictly an English dependency,
though surrounded by a score of other nationalities. With the entrance
and exit in her hands, besides holding this unequaled central depot of
arms, no nation coul