we emerge on still larger downs, dotted | his best. Now he reaches the cow and prettily with cotton-bush. Cattle-tracks her calf, a good, strong, six-months-old converge from all points to the water. bull. She swerves away as the horse apThey are quite narrow, like little foot-proaches. Now is your time, John; close paths. The ground bears on its surface on her, turn her, keep her head to the the impressions of many feet. You can- mob; give her a cut or two with your a not find a foot square without the point whip, and she will be amongst them once of a hoof of some age or another. The more. Ah! you do not know how to grass must be sweet here, the cattle keep manage your rein; your bridle-hand is it cropped down so closely. That long fumbling with it; it is too loose; your line of tall, white-stemmed gum trees whip is in your way. Gaylad flies past the marks the banks of the main creek; here is cow about twenty yards; she once more the junction of the southern and northern makes off in her own direction. Once branches. We must cross and follow up more John charges her with the same this branch next us. Yonder is a mob of result, only that this time, as he holds the cattle; they are not so quiet as those we rein tighter, Gaylad, obeying the check, have already seen. Two or three old props round at the same instant the old cows nearer us than the others lift their cow does. John finds himself sitting on heads, smelling our approach. They turn his horse's neck; it is a miracle how he and run. The old brutes, they know holds on. He manages to get back to his quite well what it is to be rounded up; seat, and, confining operations to a trot, they have been hundreds of times in the succeeds in heading the chase back yard; it is all roguery. Now some of the towards the mob. He will punish her at rest notice them running, they run also; any rate for the trouble she has given had the old cows remained quiet the him. Two or three desperate cuts at the others would have been stationary too. cow fall harmlessly, another only gets the Now they are making off in a body. Sam, lash under Gaylad's tail, who resents the the white stockman with the party, and indignity by kicking once or twice, and Peter the black fellow, mounted on Char- humping his back, and nearly upsetting coal, spur after them, get in front, and his rider. Now is a good chance; hit her heading them, bring them to a standstill. hard. A vicious cut follows. Something There are a dozen nice bullocks in the catches the fall. "O heavens, my eye! mob. After making them stand a little to shouts John, with one hand up to that cool them, Peter is sent to take them over organ, which has suffered instead of the the river to a camp, to be picked up by guilty animal. the party on their return down the other side. The party divide once more in two. Sam and Peter go one way; John still remains with his friend, and they have two or three exciting gallops after different mobs. Gaylad is sweating now. What a little stunner he is! It will not be his fault if the cattle get away. He watches their every movement with a personal interest. Fitzgerald and John have got a good mob together. They have taken them across the creek, and are bringing them down the other side to pick up the cattle on the camps there. The bullocks and steers and heifers go along without much trouble; but some of those old cows with calves try all sorts of dodges to get away. They fear that we are mustering for branding. It will come soon enough. Let us get through with these fat cattle, then we shall set to work branding. There, that cunning old wretch of a cow has managed to slip away with her calf, and she is making off for some scrub in the distance. Now, Gaylad; now, boy, fetch her back. Indeed Gaylad wants no bidding, but is flying over the ground at Now a camp with a good many cattle on it has been reached. Sam and Peter have evidently been here, and are away after more. The cattle stop of their own accord, mingling with the rest, uttering many bellows of greeting. Fitzgerald proposes to wait for a little. What a thorough master of his work he looks, as with careless ease he sits side-saddle fashion on Bugler, his long whip hanging festooned round him! Hark! there goes a whip! The cattle on the camp recommence bellowing. Here they come down this gully- the bullocks and young cattle ahead, running towards those on the camp, roaring as they run. A mixed lot, with many cows and calves bring up the rear, after which come Sam and Peter, riding side by side. There are so many cows and calves, it is not advisable to drive them as far as the main creek. We don't intend taking them home for branding to-day. We cannot draft the bullocks out properly here though; we require all hands for that. Let us keep as many as we can of the others back on the camp, therefore, when they start. It is not quite easily done either; for with stronger | interest he takes in his work. A slight perversity those even who wanted to stay raising of the bridle-hand, and Bugler behind previously now desire to go along makes a desperate rush. Startled, the with the mob, and insist on following up, beast singles out from the rest, but immeuntil effectually driven back to their diately tries to double back, and mix up camp. We have yet a large number, and with his fellows. In vain - Bugler's still pick up more as we go along. Gay- quick eye watches him too narrowly; he lad makes himself very busy in assisting has turned in the same instant, and is to drive. Should any beast in his vicinity racing alongside, between him and his lag behind to crop a sweet morsel, he bellowing mates. Now, so suddenly as to marks him; then, laying his ears back, be almost instantaneous, the determined with outstretched neck and open mouth, brute has stopped, wheeled round, and is he rushes at the offender, inflicting some- going at a headlong pace the opposite times a rather sharp bite. The loud pis- way. But it is all of no use. The practol-like report of a stock-whip is heard tised stock-horse props at the same moagain, this time ahead. The leading cat- ment, and still at speed bars the way. A the quicken their pace. Bellows in the few sharp cuts from Fitzgerald's whip distance are answered by bellows from decide the question, and the conquered the mob. We come in sight of a large creature joins a couple of his mates who number of cattle standing close together have been taken out respectively by on an open yet shady camp, and some Thompson and Sam, and who are now distance apart, under a shady tree, are running to mingle with Peter's charge. three horses. Their riders are lying on the ground. The two mobs mingle now, amid terrific roaring, as we ride up to the little party under the tree. "Well, Thompson, had much luck?" "Got about sixty or seventy head, I think." "There are forty or fifty in our lot," said Fitzgerald; we had better set to work at once. It will take all our time to get them drafted and yarded before it gets late." Now they prepare for work. John, with the lad Tommy and Billy Barlow, is told off to ride round the cattle, and prevent them straggling off the camp. Peter is to look after the bullocks when separated from the main crowd, and Fitzgerald, Thompson, and Sam are to draft. A few very quiet animals are driven out, and placed at about one hundred and fifty yards from the rest, to form a kind of nucleus mob for the bullocks to run into. Peter is in attendance to receive them when they come, and prevent their making back, or running away. Now, threading his way through the masses of cattle, Fitzgerald selects one which his practised eye tells him is of the kind wanted, and riding behind it, urges it quietly to the edge of the mob. Bugler knows his work, and loves it with all his heart. His undivided attention is given to the animal in front of him. He is aware that it is his duty to separate him from the herd, and he is determined to do it Any dodging movement on the part of the bullock, as, looking from side to side, he approaches the outside ring, is met with an involuntary motion to balk it the horse's part, revealing the intense Riding back slowly to breathe their nags, the drafters single out more of the particular class wanted, and the scene is repeated. The ground resounds with the rapid battering of the horses' feet, as, stretched at their utmost speed, the intel ligent creatures assist their riders with all their might. It is a stirring scene, full of healthy enjoyment and wild excitement. "How these Australian fellows do ride!" thought John, as he notices the sudden dead stop and sharp wheel, the rider sitting unmoved in his saddle. Look, there is a bullock which has proved too much for Thompson single-handed. He is a large roan bullock, with a red neck, and long, sharp, cocked horns. He is six or perhaps seven years old. He is one that has been missing from the run for the last year or two, and has been seen to-day for the first time during that period. Most probably he has been away on the scrub with a wild mob, and in an evil hour has taken it into his head to revisit his old haunts. His temper has not been improved by his association with the scrubbers. See, he turns on Thompson. What a narrow escape! Forrester manages to get out of his way, but receives an ugly scar on his thigh, which he will carry while he lives. Sam now bears down to Thompson's assistance. Roaney is once again cut out of the mob. Watch - now-here! here! here they come! The wild-looking roan bullock endeavors to break back, while Sam races alongside, his body bent forward, uttering short, fierce, quick shouts, as, waving his hat in his hand, he seeks to intimidate the savage scrubber into From Fraser's Magazine. LITERATURE. sheering off from the main mob. What a pace they are going at! There they ON THE ORIGIN OF A WRITTEN GREEK pass side by side between two trees, that barely allow them room. The leg of Sam's white moleskins brushes the fireblackened trunk, and adopts its color. A sudden, fierce prop, and Roaney has shot behind Sam's horse, and succeeds in burying himself among the many-colored, bellowing herd. Sam rides slowly back, and, dismounting, slackens the girths of his streaming horse, who, with hanging head and quickly heaving flanks, betrays the exertions he has made. Thompson and Fitzgerald come "That's about," remarks the former. "He's the dead finish near It is difficult for us, who live in a reading age, and have so long been familiar with rapid and easy methods of writing and printing, to realize the idea of a highly civilized community which could not, or did not, read and write. Nevertheless, there are very good reasons for believing that such a state of society is not only possible, but that it actually did exist. "There was," says Mr. Grote, up."in early Greece a time when no reading class existed." Even the more educated, go right who could read public records and inscripthrough a man," rejoins Sam, rather tions, may have had no practice at all in sulkily. "Blessed if he didn't writing. We are too apt to determine skiver my hoss!" these questions by a reference to our own standards. But a few generations ago men got on pretty well in our own country without steam-engines, railways, or the penny post, all which we have come to regard as social necessities. And when anything has become, in the present state of affairs, a necessity, we are apt to forget the difference of circumstances, in great measure, perhaps, created by it, under which we have learnt to view it as such. We can hardly comprehend how, some thirty years ago, all the despatches and all the passenger traffic between London "Now, Sam," says Fitzgerald, "as soon and Edinburgh were carried in half-a as we get him fairly out, I'll ride along-dozen coaches a day, going ten miles an side and shoulder him, and you must hour. That is because the present enor keep close up and play on him with your mous traffic itself has been created by the whip." "Well, Sam, as soon as your horse gets his wind, you and I will tackle him," says Fitzgerald. "Our horses are the handiest. I wouldn't lose that fellow for a trifle. Ten to one, if we don't get him, after this knocking about he'll make back for the scrubs again." In about ten minutes' time Sam and his master ride side by side through the crowded camp. At last they notice their savage friend pushing his way through a thick mob of cattle some distance from them. "All right," growls Sam. One or two essays are ineffectually made to rush out into the open the huge beast, whose hot blood is now boiling within him. At last he is out, and is again racing, with Fitzgerald alongside this time, to get back into the mob. "Now, then, Sam!" shouts the squatter, as the clever, bold horse, in obedience to his accomplished rider, closes on his horned antagonist, and, leaning over, presses all his weight against the scrubber's shoulder, edging him towards Peter's mob as they fly along. Sam, galloping at the creature's heels, has been waiting the word, and now commences a flagellation with his long twelve-footer, which compels the red-necked savage to keep his pace up, and gladly seek refuge among those already out. It is now time to be making homewards, and the selected fat cattle are driven steadily in, and yarded for the night. improved facilities for it. Everybody reads now because there are penny papers and an abundance of cheap periodicals and so again, it is the supply which has given such an immense impulse to the desire to avail ourselves of it. In other words, supply and demand always mu tually act and react upon each other. It is quite conceivable then that ever in very civilized and intellectual nations painting or sculpture for the eye and ora recitation for the ear might have sufficed for a long time both for the recording o facts and for the communicating of ideas In this sense, a literature (though the term itself would be an anomaly) may have existed without the use of writing For instance, the facts of history ma have been handed down by tradition and taught by lectures. Compositions both in prose and verse could be learnt by heart and recited without ever having been written down at all. The art o speaking must have long preceded th art of writing, and it may even hav EK ar or is e, 0 t 1. fourished the more from the absence of | ful as a statue," "looking as though the latter. Thus in Homer we find in a picture," and a man's character as Nestor and Ulysses famed for their elo- "unskilfully painted," for "unfavorably quence, though no hint of writing or of presented to one's notice." So also those d reading is anywhere to be found in the versed in ancient lore are spoken of as Homeric poems. It is even probable that "possessing the forms painted by older ng the high development of oratory and of hands."* The astonishing number of a sculpture at Athens in the time of Pericles still-extant Greek vases going back many ld was mainly due to the want of a current centuries before the Christian era, and or circulated literature, which deficiency containing a whole mythology in their was supplied by a corresponding pro- designs, is sufficient to prove the proposificiency in the sister arts. Human intel- tion, that painting rather than writing was id lect is sure to find its expression in one the vehicle of ideas to the ancient Greeks. way if it cannot in another. In the MidThere are, as I hope to show, grounds gdle Ages, Bible history was taught by for believing that although they early posd stained-glass windows and frescoed walls, sessed the Semitic alphabet, they made p just because there were no printed Bibles no great use of it for a long time except or prayer-books. And Dr. Maitland in for the writing or inscribing names, laws, e his "Dark Ages" remarks on the ex- treaties, decrees, or other short records traordinary knowledge of Scripture which public or domestic. All these uses are o gives a tone and a character to all the widely different from the transcription of writings and records of a period when current literature, and great confusion has e some would have us believe that the Bible been made in this respect by those who was "unknown." So with the early think the antiquity of writing in itself Greeks, where men could not write or proves the antiquity of copying books. e read in private, they talked and listened in public. The modes of instruction differed from ours, but the instruction was there, and the result was the same, making due allowance for the difference in the aggregate of human knowledge, a general intelligence and a power and habit of thought, with a feeling for the harmonious and the beautiful, and a sound judgment in social and political questions. Our ideas of the most necessary elements of education are combined in the convenient monosyllables read and write; and we joke about "the three R's" when we add a small modicum of knowledge in figures. Without such rudiments, a person now becomes a boor and a churl. But it was not so always. Perhaps indeed this thought suggests a psychological reason why the general decline of art should be so nearly coincident throughout Europe with the general use of printing, or what is called the revival of letters." This was a new method by which genius found utterance, and it drew men's attention away from other and older methods. There would not have been a Pheidias if there had been a printing-press in the Athenian Acropolis. There would have It came to be used in the sense of been no Greek plays if there had been writing" "because it was at first (as we see in the eardaily newspapers to discuss the current liest vases) an adjunct to descriptive painting. The "readtopics of the period. From this habit of Greeks had two verbs which indirectly express realizing descriptions, not from written ing," but they are clumsy shifts, unworthy of so complete a language, the one meaning recognoscere, accounts, but from painted or sculptured the other sibi colligere, "to have something put before forms, we often find the Greeks comparing which reading a written name" occurs, is Pindar, one in a collective form " The earliest passage in living objects to statuary, as when a female Ol. x. 1-3. After the age of Pericles, the verb "to form is described by the phrase "beauti-write" was used commonly enough in our literary sense. d 1 e e. 1 I call attention to a most singular, significant, and important fact, which, so far as I am aware, has never been noticed. It is this: that the Greek language, so copious, so expressive, not only has no proper verbs equivalent to the Roman legere and scribere,t but it has no terms at all for any one of the implements or materials so familiar to us in connection with writing (pen, ink, paper, book, library, copy, transcript, etc.) till a comparatively late period of the language. The only exception is, that one or two words expressing "tablets," - probably of wood overlaid with wax, -are found in the earlier writers of the Periclean era. it is abundantly clear that the use of letters for literary purposes was regarded as quite subordinate, and solely as an "aid to memory," in which sense it is often spoken of. Thus, Prometheus is said to have communicated to man "the putting together of letters, as a means for making But * Aesch. Agam. 241, 774. Eur. Hec. 559. Hippol. 451. In the latter passage ypapùs is sometimes, but 66 the authors of works laboriously wrote them on strips of wood (probably on a surface prepared with wax), and kept from contact, when laid upon each other, by raised margins like our school-slates These would be very durable, though no perhaps very portable; and yet, they would not of necessity be much larger or heavier than the ponderous folios which were issued by printers only two centuries ago. an artificial memory the recorder of all things;" and there is a well-known myth in the "Phaedrus" of Plato, in which the Egyptian god Theuth or Thoth is said to have given letters "to assist memory," to which it is objected by the then king of Egypt, that this new art will make men forget rather than remember, "because, from trusting to external signs, and from the non practice of memory, they will cease to recall facts from their own minds."* We have early mention also of inscrip- Such books were not meant in the first tions on bronze plates; † but the word for instance for transcription. It may be "book (which is our word "Bible") greatly doubted, for example, if it would does not occur at all till near the time of have been possible to procure, for money Plato, or shortly before B.C. 400. The a copy of Herodotus or Thucydides in first mention of it, I think, is in the "Birds" of Aristophanes ‡ (B.C. 415), and here it only means a collection of written oracles, which, perhaps, were among the first records that began to be written down.§ Speaking generally, it is quite extraordinary how very scanty are the notices of writing, or of any of its kindred operations or materials, throughout the earlier Greek literature. Even in the "Dialogues" of Plato, though we know written books were then fully introduced, there is a total silence as to how and on what they were written. But here comes the difficulty, from which we must try to find an escape. There is a Greek literature, and a very copious one. We have the long histories of Herodotus and Thucydides, to say nothing of Homer and Hesiod and a great number of Greek plays. It is evident that these, or most of these (allowing that epic poems may have been orally handed down) must have been written. How can we reconcile this fact, which may be regarded as certain, with the scanty notices of writing itself? This consideration should make us somewhat timid in pressing "negative evidence" too far. the lifetime of the authors. The auto I must guard myself here by stating that I am not now making a rash or dog matic assertion. I am only expressing the view which my researches into thi question have led me to accept as on th whole the most probable view. It doe not in the least follow that because the art of writing was known, and becaus the proper materials for it may have earl existed, that therefore they were mad available for the copying of books. Wha we should call "spouting," or the sens tional oral delivery of poetry or prose more often from memory than from wri ten copies was the Greek method c gaining attention to literary composition: and so we find the art of the rhapsodis flourished even in the times of Plate Xenophon, and Aristophanes. It seem to be commonly assumed, but wholly with out proof, that the earlier Greeks ha some writing-material equivalent to ou Life of Thucydides by Marcellinus. This is qui tory in i. 22, that it was not composed to vie with othe compatible with what Thucydides says of his own hi in attracting an audience for the time, or merely to "pleasing to hear" (¿ç úкpóaσw), but to keep and 1. by as a possession for all time. |