FABLE OF HERCULES AND ANTAEUS.

Antae'us--a son of Neptune and Terra, who reigned over Libya, or
Africa, and dwelt in a forest cave--was so famed for his Titanic
strength and skill in wrestling that he was emboldened to leave
his woodland retreat and engage in a contest with the renowned
hero Hercules. So long as Antaeus stood upon the ground he could
not be overcome, whereupon Hercules lifted him up in the air,
and, having apparently squeezed him to death in his arms, threw
him down; but when Antaeus touched his mother Earth and lay at
rest upon her bosom, renewed life and fresh power were given him.

In this fable Antaeus, who personifies the woodland solitude and
the desert African waste, is easily overcome by his adversary,
who represents the river Nile, which, divided into a thousand
arms, or irrigating canals, prevents the arid sand from being
borne away and then back again by the winds to desolate the fertile
valley. Thus the legend is nothing more than the triumph of art
and labor, and their reclaiming power over the woodland solitudes
and the encroaching sands of the desert. An English poet has very
happily versified the spirit of the legend, to which he has appended
a fitting moral, doubtless suggested by the warning of his own
approaching sad fate.[Footnote: This gifted poet, Mortimer Collins,
died in 1876, at the age of forty-nine, a victim to excessive
literary labor and anxiety.]

Deep were the meanings of that fable. Men
Looked upon earth with clearer eyesight then,