es, where are enshrined superstitious stories as gross as any of
those told in Fenella Stanley's ignorant letters?'

In a chapter on 'Love and Death' certain passages showed me how great
must have been the influence of this book on Wilderspin, and I no
longer wondered at what the painter had told me in Wales. I will give
one passage here, because it had a strange effect on my imagination,
as will be soon seen:

'There is an old Babylonian tablet of Nin-ki-gal, the Queen of Death,
whose abode the tablet thus describes:--

To the house men enter, but cannot depart from;
To the road men go, but cannot return;
The abode of darkness and famine,
Where earth is their food--their nourishment clay.
Light is not seen; in darkness they dwell:
Ghosts, like birds, flutter their wings there;
On the gate and the gate-posts the dust lies undisturbed.'

Another part of the inscription describes Nin-ki-gal on her throne
scattering over the earth the 'Seeds of Life and Death,' and chanting
her responses to the Sibyl, and to the prayers of the shapes kneeling
around her, the dead gods and the souls of all the sons of men. And I
often wonder whether my ancestress, Fenella Stanley, had any
traditional knowledge of the Queen of Death when she had her portrait
painted as the Sibyl. But whether she had or not, I never think of
this Babylonian Sibyl kneeling before Nin-ki-gal, surrounded by gods
and men, without seeing in the Sibyl's face the grand features of
Fenella Stanley.

THE SIBYL.

What answer, O Nin-ki-gal?
What answer, O Nin-ki-gal?
Have pity, O Queen of Queens!

NIN-KI-GAL

Life's fountain flows,
And still the drink is Death's;
Life's garden blows,
And still 'tis Ashtoreth's; [Footnote]
But all is Nin-ki-gal's.
I lent the drink of Day
To man and beast;
I lent the drink of Day
To gods for feast;
I poured the river of Night
On gods surceased:
Their blood was Nin-ki-gal's.

[Footnote: Hathor.]

THE SIBYL.

What sowest thou, Nin-ki-gal?
What growest thou, Nin-ki-gal?
Have pity, O Queen of Queens!

NIN-KI-GAL.

Life-seeds I sow--
To reap the numbered breaths;
Fair flowers I grow--
And hers, red Ashtoreth's;
Yea, all are Nin-ki-gal's!

THE SIBYL.

What knowest