ot the wedge firmer and sharper into the air, and answered
the earth-born shout with an air-born gabble--clangour to clangour.
Where were Mr Atherstone's powers of ratiocination, and all his
acoustics? Two shouts slew an eagle. What became of all the other
denizens of air--especially crows, ravens, and vultures, who, seeing two
millions of men, must have come flocking against a day of battle? Every
mother's son of them must have gone to pot. Then what scrambling among
the allied troops! And what was one eagle doing by himself "up-by
yonder?" Was he the only eagle in Assyria--the secular bird of ages? Who
was looking at him, first a speck--then faltering--then fluttering and
wildly screaming--then plump down like a stone? Mr Atherstone talks as
if he saw it. In the circumstances he had no business with his "sunny
eye growing dark." That is entering too much into the medical, or rather
anatomical symptoms of his apoplexy, and would be better for a medical
journal than an epic poem. But to be done with it--two shouts that slew
an eagle a mile up the sky, must have cracked all the tympana of the two
million shouters. The entire army must have become as deaf as a post.
Nay, Sardanapalus himself, on the mount, must have been blown into the
air as by the explosion of a range of gunpowder-mills; the campaign
taken a new turn; and a revolution been brought about, of which, at this
distance of place and time, it is not easy for us to conjecture what
might have been the fundamental features on which it would have
hinged--and thus an entirely new aspect given to all the histories of
the world.

What is said about the lion, is to our minds equally picturesque and
absurd. He was among the "far-off hills." How far, pray? Twenty miles?
If so, then without a silver ear-trumpet he could not have heard the
huzzas. If the far-off hills were so near Nineveh as to allow the lion
to hear the huzzas even in his sleep, the epithet "far-off" should be
altered, and the lion himself brought from the interior. But we cannot
believe that lions were permitted to live in dens within ear-shot of
Nineveh. Nimrod had taught them "never to come there no more"--and
Semiramis looked sharp after the suburbs. But, not to insist unduly upon
a mere matter of police, is it the nature of lions, lying in their dens
among far-off hills, to start up from their sleep, and "breathe hot
roarings out" in fierce reply to the shouts of armies? All stuff! Mr
Atherstone sho