und of a vivid picture of the manners and customs of
a corrupt age. Yet underneath its lively portraiture there runs a
current of mysticism at variance with the naive rehearsal of the hero's
adventures, and this has tempted critics to find a hidden meaning in the
story. Bishop Warburton, in his 'Divine Legation of Moses,' professes to
see in it a defense of Paganism at the expense of struggling
Christianity. While this seems absurd, it is fairly evident that the
mind of the author was busied with something more than the mere
narration of rollicking adventure, more even than a satire on Roman
life. The transformation of the hero into an ass, at the moment when he
was plunging headlong into a licentious career, and the recovery of his
manhood again through divine intervention, suggest a serious symbolism.
The beautiful episode of 'Cupid and Psyche,' which would lend salt to a
production far more corrupt, is also suggestive. Apuleius perfected this
wild flower of ancient folk-lore into a perennial plant that has
blossomed ever since along the paths of literature and art. The story
has been accepted as a fitting embodiment of the struggle of the soul
toward a higher perfection; yet, strange to say, the episode is narrated
with as brutal a realism as if it were a satire of Lucian, and its style
is belittled with petty affectations of rhetoric. It is the enduring
beauty of the conception that has continued to fascinate. Hence we may
say of 'The Golden Ass' in its entirety, that whether readers are
interested in esoteric meanings to be divined, or in the author's vivid
sketches of his own period, the novel has a charm which long centuries
have failed to dim.

Apuleius was of African birth and of good family, his mother having come
of Plutarch's blood. The second century of the Roman Empire, when he
lived (he was born at Madaura about A. D. 139), was one of the most
brilliant periods in history,--brilliant in its social gayety, in its
intellectual activities, and in the splendor of its achievements. The
stimulus of the age spurred men far in good and evil. Apuleius studied
at Carthage, and afterward at Rome, both philosophy and religion, though
this bias seems not to have dulled his taste for worldly pleasure. Poor
in purse, he finally enriched himself by marrying a wealthy widow and
inheriting her property. Her will was contested on the ground that this
handsome and accomplished young literary man had exercised magic in
winnin