in faith to the Children of Israel. The topic has since been treated in
fiction by Dr. Ebers, in his _Joshua_. In such a twilight age, fancy has
free play, but it is a curious fact that, in this romance, modern fancy
has accidentally coincided with that of ancient Greece.

Most of the novel was written, and the apparently "un-Greek" marvels
attributed to Helen had been put on paper, when a part of Furtwängler's
recent great lexicon of Mythology appeared, with the article on Helen.
The authors of _The World's Desire_ read it with a feeling akin to
amazement. Their wildest inventions about the Daughter of the Swan, it
seemed, had parallels in the obscurer legends of Hellas. There actually
is a tradition, preserved by Eustathius, that Paris beguiled Helen
by magically putting on the aspect of Menelaus. There is a mediaeval
parallel in the story of Uther and Ygerne, mother of Arthur, and
the classical case of Zeus and Amphitryon is familiar. Again, the
blood-dripping ruby of Helen, in the tale, is mentioned by Servius in
his commentary on Virgil (it was pointed out to one of the authors
by Mr. Mackail). But we did not know that the Star of the story was
actually called the "Star-stone" in ancient Greek fable. The many voices
of Helen are alluded to by Homer in the _Odyssey_: she was also named
_Echo_, in old tradition. To add that she could assume the aspect of
every man's first love was easy. Goethe introduces the same quality
in the fair witch of his _Walpurgis Nacht_. A respectable portrait of
Meriamun's secret counsellor exists, in pottery, in the British Museum,
though, as it chances, it was not discovered by us until after the
publication of this romance. The Laestrygonian of the Last Battle is
introduced as a pre-historic Norseman. Mr. Gladstone, we think, was
perhaps the first to point out that the Laestrygonians of the _Odyssey_,
with their home on a fiord in the Land of the Midnight Sun, were
probably derived from travellers' tales of the North, borne with the