• Who would credit it? Here is Atreus, that fierce, cruel, relentless man, actually loses his presence of mind, and appears perfectly dazed at the sight of his brother! Nothing, after all, is stronger than the affection arising out of blood-relationship—whilst feuds carried on by those who are aliens in blood, only grow more inveterate by time! When anger brought about by grievous events, caused the rupture between these brothers, the cry of war was heard! When the skirmishing light horsemen were on the move, amidst much champing of bits; here, there, everywhere, the naked sword flashed as it was flourished about, by ardent warriors, whom fierce Mars urges on, as with repeated onslaught, the rival combatants seek out for fresh slaughter. At length fraternal affection puts aside the sword of revenge, and draws them together with their hands clasped in friendship, once hostile!—Now reconciled! What propitious Deity has brought about such tranquillity out of so much disquiet? Only quite lately the sound of arms was rife throughout Mycenæ, in the beat of civil war—Pale, distracted mothers pressed their babes to their bosoms—wives went in fear for the fate of their husbands, armed for the fray, whilst the sword was held by a regretful hand, (and which before being taken up) had become rusty from long disuse in the preceding times of peace! Now, the whilom warrior, on one side, seeks to repair the ruined city; now the warrior of the opposite faction is busy in rehabilitating the shattered towers, and who quite lately, endeavoured to fortify his portals with iron bars, and in a state of trepidation, behind the niched battlements, as the sentinel watched during the anxious hours of night! Thus the fear of war is sometimes more terrifying than the actual battle. Now the terrors of the sword have passed away, and the sound of the shrill war trumpet is silenced, and profound peace is restored to the rejoicing city of Mycenæ! So where the North-West wind blows violently over the sea of Apulia, the waves swell up from the lowest depths, and Scylla emits a roaring response, as they beat in upon the caverns, and the seafarers dread the seas in their very ports, which the angry Charybdis receives and ejects again with terrible force—and the fierce Cyclops who inhabits the mountains of Ætna, dreads his parent's approach (Neptune) lest his forges, the fire with its noisy wrath, in those everlasting flames should be extinguished by the seas pouring down upon them; and Laërtes, of mean resources, every moment thinks that his little kingdom, will be swallowed by the watery element; whilst Ithaca trembles, too, lest the violence of the sea should overcome its powers of resistance, whilst the waters surrounding it rest as quiet as a mill-pond at ordinary times; in the main seas, whose waves the vessel fears to cut through, with its sails set, the smaller boats sail about playfully, when the sea has calmed down, and it is possible to count the very fish swimming about here, where not long ago, the Cyclades tremblingly feared the sea, when a terrific storm, a storm of unusual violence, raged around them! No condition of matter rests long in the same state; even pain and pleasure visit us by turns, inconstant. Fortune changes the venue from the most lofty situation and substitutes one very much lower. He that graces his head with the diadem, and before whom, the peoples tremble on bended knees, at whose nod the Mede lays down his arms, and the Indian, a nearer neighbour of Phœbus, (more easterly) and the Daci terrified at the Parthian horsemen, with anxious fear that the king holds the sceptre, and he foreshadows all things, and learns to dread the shifting and capricious tides of precarious Fortune and the uncertainty with which they arrive.