bosom who had received me from Xanthus, I saw my beloved father struggling on the ground, livid and speechless.  The more violent my cries, the more rapidly they hurried me away; and many were soon between us.

“Little was I suspicious that he had suffered the pangs of famine long before:  alas! and he had suffered them for me.  Do I weep while I am telling you they ended?  I could not have closed his eyes; I was too young; but I might have received his last breath, the only comfort of an orphan’s bosom.  Do you now think him blameable, O AEsop?”

    “AEsop.  It was sublime humanity; it was forbearance and
    self-denial which even the immortal gods have never shown us.”

The Dream of Petrarca is, I think, more famous but not more beautiful than this narrative of Rhodope; it lacks the deep human tragedy and infinite charity of the winsome child, and the self-contained father silently perishing of hunger for her; but if the AEsop and Rhodope had never been written, the Dream of Petrarca would secure its author a place among the immortals:—­

“...  Wearied with the length of my walk over the mountains, and finding a soft molehill, covered with grey moss, by the wayside, I laid my head upon it and slept.  I cannot tell how long it was before a species of dream or vision came over me.

“Two beautiful youths appeared beside me; each was winged; but the wings were hanging down and seemed ill-adapted to flight.  One of them, whose voice was the softest I ever heard, looking at me frequently, said to the other, ’He is under my guardianship for the present; do not awaken him with that feather.’  Methought, on hearing the whisper, I saw something like the feather on an arrow; and then the arrow itself; the whole of it, even to the point, although he carried it in such a manner that it was difficult at first to discover more than a palm’s length of it; the rest of the shaft (and the whole of the barb) was behind his ankles.

    “‘This feather never awakens anyone,’ replied he, rather
    petulantly, ’but it brings more of confident security, and more of
    cherished dreams, than you, without me, are capable of imparting.’

“‘Be it so!’ answered the gentler; ’none is less inclined to quarrel or dispute than am I. Many whom you have wounded grievously call upon me for succour; but so little am I disposed to thwart you, it is seldom I venture to do more for them than to whisper a few words of comfort in passing.  How many reproaches on these occasions have been cast upon me for indifference and infidelity!  Nearly as many, and nearly in the same terms as upon you.’

“‘Odd enough that we, O Sleep! should be thought so alike!’ said Love contemptuously.  ’Yonder is he who bears a nearer resemblance to you; the dullest have observed it.’  I fancied I turned my eyes to where he was pointing, and saw at a distance