e white part is
the ocean, the yolk is the earth, and the arched shell is the sky. In
India this is the mundane egg of Brahma; and it reappears among the
Yorubas as a pair of calabashes put together like oyster-shells, one
making a dome over the other. In Zulu-land the earth is a huge beast
called Usilosimapundu, whose face is a rock, and whose mouth is very
large and broad and red: "in some countries which were on his body it
was winter, and in others it was early harvest." Many broad rivers flow
over his back, and he is covered with forests and hills, as is indicated
in his name, which means "the rugose or knotty-backed beast." In this
group of conceptions may be seen the origin of Sindbad's great fish,
which lay still so long that sand and clay gradually accumulated upon
its back, and at last it became covered with trees. And lastly, passing
from barbaric folk-lore and from the Arabian Nights to the highest level
of Indo-European intelligence, do we not find both Plato and Kepler
amusing themselves with speculations in which the earth figures as a
stupendous animal?

VI. JUVENTUS MUNDI. [150]

TWELVE years ago, when, in concluding his "Studies on Homer and the
Homeric Age," Mr. Gladstone applied to himself the warning addressed by
Agamemnon to the priest of Apollo,

"Let not Nemesis catch me by the swift ships."

he would seem to have intended it as a last farewell to classical
studies. Yet, whatever his intentions may have been, they have yielded
to the sweet desire of revisiting familiar ground,--a desire as strong
in the breast of the classical scholar as was the yearning which led
Odysseus to reject the proffered gift of immortality, so that he might
but once more behold the wreathed smoke curling about the roofs of his
native Ithaka. In this new treatise, on the "Youth of the World," Mr.
Gladstone discusses the same questions which were treated in his earlier
work; and the main conclusions reached in the "Studies on Homer"
are here so little modified with reference to the recent progress of
archaeological inquiries, that the book can hardly be said to have had
any other reason for appearing, save the desire of loitering by the
ships of the Argives, and of returning thither as often as possible.

The title selected by Mr. Gladstone for his new work is either a very
appropriate one or a strange misnomer, according to the point of
view from which it is regarded. Such being the case, we might readi