y deal in marvels and miracles, oracles and warnings. All such bogy
stories as those of your 'Philopseudes,' and the ghost of the lady who
took to table-rapping because one of her best slippers had not been
burned with her body, are gravely investigated by the Psychical Society.

Even your ignorant Bibliophile is still with us--the man without a tinge
of letters, who buys up old manuscripts 'because they are stained and
gnawed, and who goes, for proof of valued antiquity, to the testimony
of the book-worms.' And the rich Bibliophile now, as in your satire,
clothes his volumes in purple morocco and gay _dorures_, while their
contents are sealed to him.

As to the topics of satire and gay curiosity which occupy the lady known
as 'Gyp,' and M. Halevy in his 'Les Petites Cardinal,' if you had not
exhausted the matter in your 'Dialogues of Hetairai,' you would be
amused to find the same old traits surviving without a touch of change.
One reads, in Halevy's French, of Madame Cardinal, and, in your Greek,
of the mother of Philinna, and marvels that eighteen hundred years
have not in one single trifle altered the mould. Still the old shabby
light-loves, the old greed, the old luxury and squalor. Still the
unconquerable superstition that now seeks to tell fortunes by the
cards, and, in your time, resorted to the sorceress with her magical
'bull-roarer' or '_turndun_.' (1)

(1)The Greek _rombos_ [transliterated], mentioned by Lucian
and Theocritus, was the magical weapon of the Australians--
the _turndun_.

Yes, Lucian, we are the same vain creatures of doubt and dread, of
unbelief and credulity, of avarice and pretence, that you knew, and at
whom you smiled. Nay, our very 'social question' is not altered. Do
you not write, in 'The Runaways,' 'The artisans will abandon their
workshops, and leave their trades, when they see that, with all the
labour that bows their bodies from dawn to dark, they make a petty and
starveling pittance, while men that toil not nor spin are floating in
Pactolus'?

They begin to see this again as of yore; but whether the end of their
vision will be a laughing matter, you, fortunate Lucian, do not need to
care. Hail to you, and farewell!

VII. To Maitre Francoys Rabelais.

Of the Coming of the Coqcigrues.

Master,--In the Boreal and Septentrional lands, turned aside from the
noonday and the sun, there dwelt of old (as thou knowest, and as Olaus
voucheth) a race of men, br