horse and with an ass (he does not call it another ass), and adds plaintively, Besides, under any circumstances, I was not accustomed to dine upon hay. No wonder that he envied the dogs who enjoyed the remnants of the rich man's feast, while he was fain to meditate bitter curses on Fotis, because she had not at least blundered him into a. dog rather than an ass. Sometimes, however, he is inclined to play a little with his own misfortune; as when, listening to the wicked confidences which his mistress exchanges with her gossip in his presence, he derives some consolation from the length of his ears which put such secrets in his power. There is an odd humour, too, in the view which he takes of the relations between his own personality and the shape which he is condemned to wear; as when he speaks of himself as asinus meus, looking forward to the time when he should resume his proper figure. And he is evidently half amused at his own abortive attempts at human vocalisa tion; as when, passing through a populous village, he would fain invoke assistance by the cry of O Quirites, the utterance of a Roman citizen under circumstances which would induce an Englishman to shout 'Police!'-the one call being probably as effectual in most cases as the other. He rounds the O to a most sonorous deliverance, but his Quirites is a failure, and, notwithstanding all his efforts, will not be brayed. While, however, we cannot believe that Apuleius himself wrote in a spirit hostile to Christianity, it is worth remarking that in subsequent times his name, in conjunction with that of Apollonius of Tyana and others, was put forward by pagan controversialists among those alleged workers of miracles whose performances they affirmed to vie with those which the preachers of Christianity described to their hearers. It is : curious that the disputants on the other side were inclined to admit these claims to portentous power, perhaps from an unwillingness to circumscribe the province of the supernatural. The working of signs and wonders,' says St. Jerome, is no great thing of itself: such were wrought by the magicians of Egypt in opposition to Moses, by Apollonius, by Apuleius.' St. Augustine even assumes (De Civitate Dei, xviii. 18) that Apuleius may possibly have been describing his own actual experience when he relates the transformation of Lucius into an ass. 'For,' he adds, 'when I was in Italy, I heard of several similar occurrences in a certain district of that country where, as they assured me, women tending the herds were in the practice of giving to travellers cheese prepared with the evil arts in which they were skilled, and which at once transformed the recipients into beasts of burden; in which shape they were fain to carry all loads that were put upon them, returning to themselves after they had performed the required tasks. all the time they retained their human reason in full, their mind never becoming bestial.' It is the more curious that Apuleius should have acquired this reputation after his death, because he was at great pains to persuade his own contemporaries (like Gray before the ghostly dames in the gallery at Stoke) that he ne'er was for a conjurer taken.' He has left us in his Apologia an amusing specimen of the litigation of his time. contains the defence which he made in person before the Roman proconsul at Ea, an African city, where he had taken up his abode for a time, having married a wealthy widow considerably older than himself. The relations of the first husband took offence at the marriage, and one of them, the Æmilianus above mentioned, accused Apuleius in the L L And It proconsul's court as having beguiled the affections of the widow Pudentilla by the use of 'undue influences' in the shape of magical arts. Apuleius, it must be owned, does not defend himself quite so gracefully as Othello does when assailed by a similar charge before the Council at Venice. He rather seems to suggest the inference that his matrimonial bargain was not so good a one as that he need have employed enchantments to procure it. 'It was by no means,' he says, ' a prosperous match nay, indeed, it was one to be avoided, but that the bride compensated by her own virtues for its many drawbacks.' However, his arguments secured him a triumphant acquittal; and the lady is said to have made him a very good wife : at all events she is cited by Sidonius Apollinaris among the instances of women married to learned men who assisted their husbands in their literary labours. This abortive accusation, strengthened, perhaps, by the incidents recorded in the Golden Ass, was probably the sole foundation of the character which Apuleius afterwards acquired of being a worker of signa. It may be worth while to note the different view which philosophers were now beginning to take of such pretensions as compared with that current in a former age. When Horace heard of a miracle he laughed it off with his Credat Judæus! But the champions of paganism with whose writings Augustine had to deal were quite ready to grant the authenticity of the Gospel miracles; they only contended that Apollonius and Apuleius and others had done as much or more. And Augustine, as we have seen, was inclined to allow the reality of these pagan wonders; insisting, however, that such works, when wrought by the aid of dæmons, instead of that of the holy angels, are wrought 'not in verity, but in appearance; not by wisdom, but by mere glamour.' The pretty episode of Cupid and Psyche, to which Apuleius' work chiefly owes its fame, appears also to have been more particularly his own share in the composition. There is nothing of the kind in Lucian, and we may suppose, therefore, that it formed no part of the original story which Lucian and Apuleius severally adapted from the works of Lucius of Patræ. Most likely, however, it was an old fable current in various forms. It seems to have charmed the fancy of Apuleius, who filled up with a variety of picturesque details the legend of which the following is an outline. A certain king and queen had three daughters, all of them beautiful, but the youngest, Psyche, of such surpassing loveliness that the people paid her almost divine honours, and in their admiration of her neglected the shrines of Venus. The goddess was jealous of her earthly rival, and charged her son Cupid with the task of executing her vengeance by beguiling Psyche into the love of some unworthy object. Time goes on, and the two elder sisters make suitable matches; but Psyche's beauty is too divine a thing for the earthly lovers of her day, and no man asks her in marriage. Her parents are sorrowful at this result, and consult the oracle of Apollo. They derive little comfort from the answer which they receive: Go and set the maiden down Quelling all things with his force, And to streams of Stygian night. In deep grief they obey the mys terious oracle, and Psyche is laid out with all funeral honours on the craggy top of a neighbouring mountain. There they leave her: the unhappy parents hiding them selves in their palace, and resolving never to see the sun again. But Psyche is borne away by the Zephyrs to a cool green valley, gay with flowers and shaded by noble trees, in the midst of which she finds a fair palace gorgeously decked with jewels and curious marbles, while mysterious voices invite her to enter and tell her that all is hers. Unseen attendants place an exquisite banquet before her; unsen singers delight her with their melodies, unseen hands touch the harp and lute. She becomes the bride of an unseen lord, who visits her in the darkness of night and always leaves her before morning. But Psyche after a time, oppressed with the sense of loneliness, intreats her mysterious husband that she may see her sisters. He reluctantly consents, warning her at the same time of the danger which she incurs. He promises that when the sisters next come to the mountain height, as they were wont to do, to mourn for their lost Psyche, he will send the Zephyrs to transport them to the happy valley. It is done, and It is done, and Psyche has the delight of entertaining her sisters, who gaze with wondering admiration on the surroundings of her lot. They ask, of course, many questions about her husband, which Psyche evades, having promised secrecy on the subject. She accounts for his absence by saying that he is engaged in hunting. After this visit the sisters begin to be envious of poor Psyche, and persuade each other that she has treated them with a haughty ostentation in the display of her good fortune. Ultimately they entertain a bitter malice against her, of which she is warned by her husband, who cautions her to make no revelations concerning him, nor to be induced by them to wish to see his face. 'If,' he adds, 'thou duly keepest my secret, then our unborn offspring shall be divine, but otherwise it will be mortal.' At last, however, unwary Psyche betrays to her sisters the fact that she has never seen her husband; and they immediately strive to convince her that he must be the winged serpent spoken of in the oracle, assuring her that such a monster has been actually observed in the neighbourhood. Overcome by curiosity and alarm, Psyche conceals a lamp, and waiting her opportunity when her husband is asleep, starts at beholding the God of Love in his divine beauty. He wakes, and at once flies away, telling her that she has undone them both. Psyche sets out in search of him, but falls into the power of Venus, who treats her as a slave, setting her various heavy tasks, the last of which is to go down to the lower regions and bring back from Proserpine a portion of that goddess's beauty as a present to Venus. She receives the gift in a box, but cannot resist the temptation to lift the lid on her return. From the box issues a Lethean sleep which overwhelms her. Cupid finds her thus 'sweet entranced,' and solicits the aid of Jupiter, through whose intervention all ends well. Psyche receives the gift of immortality and remains the eternal bride of the Love-god. There is a good deal of quaint humour in the concluding speech of Jupiter, who begins by addressing the assembled Olympian Powers as Dii Conscripti-by analogy to the Patres Conscripti in the mouth of a Roman senator. So, if Apuleius had been familiar with our Parliamentary usages, he might have described the king of gods and men as referring, after the manner of Mr. Gladstone, to a right honourable deity on his left, and so forth. Such is the tale which Apuleius has told. Probably in its earliest form it suggested nothing more than the subsidence of love's young dream into the realities of life, the sorrows which supervene on the passage from the romance of girl hood to the cares of woman, and the development of a sublimer hope in the end, gleaming more or less through the doubts and difficulties of heathenism. Whether Apuleius in his conception of the story, and in the ornaments which he has imported into it, meant anything more recondite than this, his readers must judge for themselves. Of course, Bishop Warburton has his theory in deference to the pagan championship which he would attribute to Apuleius. The story, he says, 'is a philosophic allegory of the progress of the soul to perfection, in the possession of Divine love and the reward of immortality. The various labours and traverses of the soul in this progress are all represented as the effects of her indiscreet passion for that species of magic called theurgy. Through this she is undone; Divine love forsakes her; the happy scenes of her abode vanish; and she finds herself forlorn and abandoned, surrounded with miseries, and pursued with the vengeance of Heaven, by its instrument the celestial Venus.' That strange fanciful heathen, Thomas Taylor, who formulated Neoplatonism into a sectarian system, and was as earnest in its behalf as ever was David Deans for a proposition of Calvin's-had his own explanation of the apologue. It denotes, he thinks, the lapse of the soul from the intelligible world to the earth.' Such an interpretation, it must be owned, needs an interpreter. We understand Mr. Taylor to have in view Plato's parables in the Phædrus and elsewhere, and in conformity with these parables (which he was ready to accept as articles of faith) the idea of man as discerned from Plato's realistic point of view, which receives form and animal life by its lapse' into matter. Cupid is 'intellectual love,' and the state of the soul in her union with him is one of paradisaical perfection 6 until it is debased by the interference of her two sisters, Anger and Desire, at whose instigation she must needs become acquainted with the corporeal form of Love. These two sisters are explained by Warburton, much in the same way, as 'Sense and Appetite;' and by Ful gentius (a grammarian of the sixth century, who set about allegorising the whole remains of ancient mythology) as Animal Life and the Will. A Copenhagen professor, Thorlacius, who did good service in tracing the illustrations of this story afforded by gems and other works of ancient art, insists that Apuleius' special object in writing it was to dignify and recommend conjugal love in opposition to the lawless indulgence which was demoralising the Roman world in his times. Certainly, if our author intended to inculcate such a moral, he has not made it very patent on the face of his narrative. We cannot believe, however, that he designed any very elaborate allegory. If, as we have conjectured, the tale was simply suggested by the contemplation of woman's life as developed from her girlish innocence, it may readily be conceived, further, that Apuleius, having in hand the adventures of Psyche,' or the human soul, would dwell on the thought so dear to his master, Plato, of the immortality of man, and would give such a turn to his story as might serve to suggest this pro spect; more especially as the subject before him so nearly resembled one of those mythi under the guise of which Plato loved to propound his speculations. Probably, however, those who read the tale of Cupid and Psyche will in general be attracted by the incidents and the manner in which they are related; and will bestow (as do most readers of the Pilgrim's Progress) but a very cursory thought on the interpretation.' C. G. PROWETT. THE THE NAVAL WAR GAME.' HE assistance afforded by the German KRIEGSPIEL to students of military tactics has attracted the attention of naval tacticians. If the commanders of regiments, divisions, and armies, can exercise warlike skill in intellectual encounters upon a map, in accordance with the rules of a military war game, why may not the commanders of ships, squadrons, and fleets, derive similar aid in the scientific study of naval battles from a nautical war game? This question suggested itself to several seamen when the German KRIEG SPIEL was first introduced into this country. The problems involved in naval battles seem much more simple than those pertaining to land warfare. At sea, the commander has all his forces arrayed within sight, whilst no hills, or woods, or villages, cover the hostile positions, or hide the enemy's strength, so that surprise cannot occur after the battle has begun. No swamps, or rivers, or broken ground, impede direct approaches. In general, no communications, except for retreat, need be preserved. Even the wind, once a ruling element of naval battle, no longer dominates the proceedings. A plain surface, bounded by the far horizon, with unlimited power to move in any direction, represents at once the simplicity and the embarrassment of the situation. It is, indeed, this power to move in any direction, irrespective of the wind, which has overthrown all the old traditions and rules of maritime war, and turned us adrift on an, as yet, illimitable ocean of speculation. The sailor's profession was formerly an instinct-it is now a science. Any suggestion tending to methodise vague conceptions, and to give precision of ideas, and form a limit to tactical science, is worthy of careful, not to say favourable, consideration. Of this character is the 'Naval War Game,' devised by Lieutenant W. M. F. Castle, R.N., the experienced gunnery officer of H.M. ship Hercules, who has devoted the few leisure moments of the most arduous office in a most hard-worked profession to working out the details of his scheme. The Hercules is an ironclad attached to the Channel squadron, in the proceedings of which evolutionary exercises hold a prominent place, so that Lieutenant Castle had the movements of an actual squadron before him daily while devising his 'War Game' to suit the recognised manoeuvres of the British fleet. The official General Signal Book, which is at once the manual of naval tactics and the authorised medium of communication between the commander-in-chief and the several ships, is the dictionary employed for conveying the wishes of the students as to the movements. of the game. But beyond its present purpose of interpreting the general signals, the War Game' is susceptible of affording instrumental aid in the study of any other manoeuvres. 1 La Marine d'aujourd'hui. By Admiral Jurien de la Gravière. Naval Autumn Manœuvres. Naval Science, January 1873. The Attack and Defence of Fleets. By Captain P. H. Colomb, R.N. 6 Tactical Formations and Manœuvres for General Actions at Sea; and Fleet Evolutions and Naval Tactics. By Commander Cyprian A. G. Bridge, R.N. The Game of Naval Tactics. By Lieutenant W. M. F. Castle, R.N. Ramming as a Mode of Naval Warfare. By Staff-Commander P. Going, R.N, |