from beneath the lava beds of Santorin."

"I can't help that," I said. "The Polynesians used them too; and you see
I can read them easily, though I don't know Greek."

I then told him the whole story of my connection with the island, and of
the unfortunate results of the contact between these poor people and our
superior modern civilization.

I have rarely seen a man more affected by any recital than was the head
of the classical department of the Museum by my artless narrative. When
I described the sacrifice I saw on landing in the island, he exclaimed,
"Great Heavens! the Attic Thargelia." He grew more and more excited as I
went on, and producing a Greek book, "Pausanias," he showed me that the
sacrifice of wild beasts was practised sixteen hundred years ago in
honour of Artemis Elaphria. The killing of old Elatreus for entering the
town hall reminded him of a custom in Achaea Pthiotis. When I had
finished my tale, he burst out into violent and libellous language. "You
have destroyed," he said, "with your miserable modern measles and
Gardiner guns, the last remaining city of the ancient Greeks. The winds
cast you on the shore of Phaeacia, the island sung by Homer; and, in your
brutal ignorance, you never knew it. You have ruined a happy, harmless,
and peaceful people, and deprived archaeology of an opportunity that can
never, never return!"

I do not know about archaeology, but as for "harmless and peaceful
people," I leave it to my readers to say whether the islanders were
anything of the sort.

I learn that the Government has just refused to give the Museum a grant
of five thousand pounds to be employed in what are called "Excavations in
Ancient Phaeacia," diggings, that is, in Boothland.

With so many darkened people still ignorant of our enlightened
civilization, I think the grant would be a shameful waste of public
money. {106}

* * * * *

We publish the original text of the prophecy repeatedly alluded to by Mr.
Gowles. The learned say that no equivalent occurs for the line about his
"four eyes," and it is insinuated, in a literary journal of eminence,
that Mr. Gowles pilfered the notion from Good's glass eye, in a secular
romance, called King Solomon's Mines, which Mr. Gowles, we are sure,
never heard of in his life.--ED.

THE PROPHECY.

[The Prophecy in Greek - not reproduced]

IN THE WRONG PARADISE
AN OCCIDENTAL APOLOGUE.

In the drawing-room, or, as it is more correctly ca