in opening it, I bend close enough to catch the _scent_ of the leaves, I
am back again at that day of boyhood (noted on the fly-leaf by the hand
of one long dead) when the book was new and I used it for the first time.
It was a day of summer, and perhaps there fell upon the unfamiliar page,
viewed with childish tremor, half apprehension and half delight, a mellow
sunshine, which was to linger for ever in my mind.

But I am thinking of the _Anabasis_. Were this the sole book existing in
Greek, it would be abundantly worth while to learn the language in order
to read it. The _Anabasis_ is an admirable work of art, unique in its
combination of concise and rapid narrative with colour and
picturesqueness. Herodotus wrote a prose epic, in which the author's
personality is ever before us. Xenophon, with curiosity and love of
adventure which mark him of the same race, but self-forgetful in the
pursuit of a new artistic virtue, created the historical romance. What a
world of wonders in this little book, all aglow with ambitions and
conflicts, with marvels of strange lands; full of perils and rescues,
fresh with the air of mountain and of sea! Think of it for a moment by
the side of Caesar's Commentaries; not to compare things incomparable,
but in order to appreciate the perfect art which shines through
Xenophon's mastery of language, his brevity achieving a result so
different from that of the like characteristic in the Roman writer.
Caesar's conciseness comes of strength and pride; Xenophon's, of a vivid
imagination. Many a single line of the _Anabasis_ presents a picture
which deeply stirs the emotions. A good instance occurs in the fourth
book, where a delightful passage of unsurpassable narrative tells how the
Greeks rewarded and dismissed a guide who had led them through dangerous
country. The man himself was in peril of his life; laden with valuable
things which the soldiers had given him in their gratitude, he turned to
make his way through the hostile region. [Greek text]. "When evening