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faithful, and Lucian bade him tell Alexander that he was suffering from a pain in his side. He then wrote on two slips of paper, 'What was the birthplace of Homer?' enclosed them in two packets, and sealed them as before. The valet informed the prophet that one referred to the pain, and that the other was to ask whether his master should return to Italy by land or sea. The replies were first an advice to try Alexander's plaster, secondly an intimation that a voyage would prove dangerous. These experiments would have been enough for Lucian, but his object was rather to convince his friend than himself, and he tried again.

This time he wrote, "When will the villanies of Alexander be exposed?' At the back of the envelope he made a note that it contained eight questions, all of which he paid for. The prophet was completely caught; he returned eight answers, the whole of them unintelligible; and with demonstration, as he thought, in his hands, Lucian went to his friend.

He found his labour thrown away. Belief in the marvellous does not rise from evidence and will not yield to it. There is the easy answer, that infidels are answered according to the impiety of their hearts, that the gods will not and perhaps cannot work miracles in the presence of sceptics. Nothing came of this first visit except that Lucian lost the regard of his friend, whom Alexander warned against him. But he had become interested in the matter; he determined to probe the mystery to the bottom. He went to the governor and offered, if he could have security for his life, to furnish him with proofs of the imposition which would justify the interference of the police.

The governor gave him a guard of soldiers, and thus attended he went to Abonotichus a second time. The prophet was holding his levée. Lucian presented himself, neglecting to make an obeisance, to the general scandal. The prophet took no notice, but gave him his hand to kiss, and Lucian bit it to the bone. The believers shrieked, and Lucian would have been strangled but for his guard. Alexander, however, to his surprise and real admiration, bore the pain manfully. He told his friends that he and his god had tamed ruder spirits than Lucian's; he bade them all retire, and leave him and his visitor together.

When they were alone, he asked Lucian quietly why a person whose acquaintance he had valued, was determined to be his enemy. Calmness is always agreeable. Lucian never doubted for a moment Alexander's real character, but the prophet interested him in spite of himself. That he might study him at leisure, he accepted his overtures, and even entered into some kind of intimacy with him. He stayed for some days at Abonotichus. The worshippers were astonished to find an open blasphemer admitted to confidential intercourse with their chief. And Alexander undoubtedly succeeded, if not in disarming his guest's suspicions, yet in softening the vehemence of his dislike. He was so clever, so well informed, apparently so frank and open, that,

as Lucian said, he would have taken in Epicurus himself. The search for evidence against him was dropped, the governor's guard was sent home, and Lucian after a prolonged visit accepted an offer from Alexander to send him by water to the Bosphorus. The prophet placed at his disposition one of his finest vessels, saw him on board, loaded him with presents, and so dismissed him.

Keener-witted man than Lucian was not alive on earth; yet his wit had not saved him from being to some extent deceived, and he had a near escape of paying with his life for his credulity. He had not been long at sea when he observed the pilot and crew consulting together. The crew were insisting upon something to which the pilot would not consent. The pilot at length came to him and said that 'Alexander's orders were that Lucian was to be thrown overboard; he had a wife and children, he had lived respectably for sixty years, and did not wish in his old age to stain his conscience with a murder. He could not go on to the Bosphorus, but he would put his passenger on shore.'

Lucian was landed in Bithynia. He was a person of considerable public influence. He had powerful friends in the province and at Rome. He was looked on favourably by Marcus Aurelius himself. He laid his story before the governor, not Lepidus, but another, and Lucian, if any one, might be assured that what he said would receive attention. But in an era of belief, reason and fact are powerless; the governor told him that if he could convict Alexander on the clearest evidence it would be impossible to punish him. Prophet he was in the opinion of the whole country, and prophet he would remain. Lucian was as little successful as his predecessors, and his interference had gained him nothing except materials for the singular account which he has left behind. Rutilian was abandoned to fate and to the daughter of the Moon, and the glories of the prophet of Abonotichus were established above the reach of calumny. The Emperor bestowed distinctions on him. The name of his town was changed. Coins were struck, and now are extant, with the sweet one's' face on one side and Alexander's on the other. He lived to be an old man, and died with his fame undimmed and the belief in him unabated. What became of the snake, history omits to tell.

The superstition did not break in pieces at once. The oracle continued to prophesy after Alexander's death, and there was a competition among the disciples as to which of them was to succeed him. The favourite candidate was an old physician, who, Lucian says, ought not to have been found in such company. The dispute was referred at last to Rutilian, who decided that no successor was needed. Alexander was not dead, but was translated merely into a better world, from which he still watched over his faithful followers.

So ends this singular story, valuable for the light which it throws on a critical epoch in human history, and especially on the disposition of the people among whom Paul and Barnabas were taken for gods,

and among whom Paul founded his seven Churches. Christianity exactly met what they were searching for in an ennobling and purifying form, and saved those who accepted it from being the victims of sham prophets like Alexander. To persons so circumstanced, men of intellect like Lucian addressed themselves in vain. The science of Epicurus was merely negative. He might insist that miracles were an illusion, and that the laws of nature were never broken; but to the human heart craving for light from heaven, and refusing to be satisfied without it, Epicurus had not a word to say, not a word of what lay behind the veil, not a word which would serve for guidance in the paths of ordinary duty. Intellect and experience may make it probable to thoughtful persons that morality and happiness go together; but when all is said, clever men are found of a different opinion; and if the human race had waited to recognise the sanctions of moral obligation till science had made out on what they rested to its own satisfaction, the first steps out of barbarism would have been never taken. Knowledge is a plant which grows but slowly. Those who gather knowledge must live before they can learn. How to live therefore, how to distinguish good from evil, press first for an immediate answer. And the answer was given by conscience whole æons before reflecting intellect had constructed its theories of expediency and the greatest happiness of the greatest number.

Out of conscience grows religion; but religion when St. Paul came was dead, and the educated multitudes in the Empire were sitting by the body of it, unable to believe that it was gone, and still passionately hoping that the silent gods would again speak to them out of heaven. So intense was the longing, that reason had abdicated its proper function; any plausible pretender could collect disciples in millions; and to an audience thus prepared to receive it, Christianity was originally offered. Independent of philosophy, the better sort of men hate evil and impurity; their instincts were recognised and justified in the new creed, and they welcomed it as a reviving principle of moral life. It did not save them from illusions which men of science would have escaped. Holiness of life is no protection against freaks of imagination; God is so near to the believer that he sees His action everywhere, and the hagiology of the early Church is as full of legend as the pagan mythology. The apocryphal gospels breathe a spirit to the full as credulous as the story of the incarnation of Glycon at Abonotichus; with this essential and enormous difference, however, that the credulity of the Christians was dominated by conscience, and they detected a polluted impostor with as sure an instinct as the most cultivated Epicurean.

J. A. FROUde.

THE PUBLIC

PUBLIC INTEREST IN

AGRICULTURAL REFORM.

(Concluded.)

THE foolish notion, entertained by a few persons whose literary reputation is greater than their knowledge of the subject on which they have written with an unwarrantable assumption of authority, that the natural destiny of the land of this country is to become a pleasure-ground for the rich, has been rudely knocked on the head by the results of the present agricultural and commercial depression. If it were no matter whether we grow much or little agricultural produce in the United Kingdom, the ruin of farmers by hundreds, or even by thousands, would be a matter of important concern only to themselves, their relatives, and their creditors; as the farms vacated by farmers would speedily be converted into pleasure-parks and gamepreserves by the wealthy men who have accumulated money in commercial pursuits. Rents would keep up at least to the old rates, farm-labourers would find employment as under-gardeners and gamekeepers, and village tradesmen and mechanics would have full employment in supplying the many needs of their new and luxurious neighbours. But as it is, we see that a few years of unprofitable farming have sent rents down with a run, left hundreds of farms tenantless, thrown labourers in large numbers out of constant employment, and brought something very near to general bankruptcy upon the rural districts at large. Nor is this all; for those who take a gloomy view of the future have as strong a fear of a permanent decrease in our commercial supremacy as they have of agricultural decline. It is quite clear, then, that whatever may be the ultimate destiny of this country, it is not near being ready for a transformation into a great pleasure-ground for the rich. I take it that even the few persons who once harboured such a picture in their imagination will now admit that agricultural reform, so far as it will conduce to an increase in the home production of food, is a national question, though the vastness of the interests involved may not have been recognised by them or by people generally. But, presuming that

the figures and deductions from them contained in the preceding portion of this paper are sufficient to convince those who had not previously investigated the subject, that agricultural reform is one of the most important questions of the day, I have yet to meet another difficulty. Many persons who admit that the continuous increase of our importation of foreign food, in excess of the amount required to make up for increase of population, is a national evil, if not a national disgrace, are in the habit of regarding all distinct proposals for remedying the evil as merely farmers' questions, while others boldly deny their efficacy. I am here less concerned with the latter than with the former-with the objectors than with the merely indifferent lookers-on. It is a curious fact that nearly all disinterested writers who have made a study of our system of land tenure in all its branches have come to the conclusion that the principal demands of agricultural reformers are both justifiable and desirable. The objectors are chiefly people who have vested interests which they fear to have disturbed, with respect to whom it is not unfair to remark that there are none so blind as those who will not see.' Amongst them are many tenant-farmers who have, or think they have, certain advantages which they fear might be lost in any transformation of our land system. But the chief obstacles to agricultural reform have been ignorance and indifference-I might say indifference accounted for by ignorance. This is shown by the fact that all the most important of the demands for such reform are older than any living man, while some of them are quite ancient; for it is clear that the opposition of a comparatively few interested people would not have availed if the public had strongly desired to overrule it. The all-important thing to do, then, is to convince the public at large of the interest which they actually have in each of the most important proposals of agricultural reformers. I proceed, therefore, to show, as far as my ability allows, the need for the reforms to which I have vaguely alluded, premising that I do not include amongst them any such wild schemes as the nationalisation of the land, or the gradual reduction of large estates by the very simple process of sweating them down' at the expense of their owners.

To all who have been in the habit of reading agricultural books and papers, and to many who have seen reports of discussions held at meetings of Farmers' Clubs and Chambers of Agriculture, the demands which I am about to mention are familiar, though, until within the last few weeks, strange to say, there has been no organisation in this country which has definitely formulated them in a published programme. Since the first portion of this paper was written, an association of the agricultural reformers of the United Kingdom, under the title of The Farmers' Alliance,' has been formed, and formed too under such favourable auspices, that it promises to become a very powerful organisation. As the list of objects put forward by the