PHAETON PRECIPITATED FROM THE CHARIOT OF SOL.

Sol, or the sun, is stated by some mythologists to be the same as Apollo. This however is not the general opinion. Sol was the son of Hyperion; though some authors suppose Sol and Hyperion the same. Lucian makes Sol one of the Titans. He is usually represented like a young man with a radiated head, his pallium thrown over his left arm.

Sol had four horses, to wheel his flaming car through the vaulted skies. Fulgentius says, the names of these horses are, Erythreus or the Red, Acteon or the Bright, Lampos the Resplendent, and Philogous the Lover of the Earth. The first name, Erythreus, is taken from the ring of the sun, when his rays are of a ruddy colour.

for this reason that Homer calls Aurora rosy-fingered. The second of Sol's horses, Acteon, has his name from the brightness of the sun after he has made considerable progress in his career for the day. The third, Lampos, is so called from the splendour of the noon-day sun. The fourth, Philogous, takes his name from the setting sun, when he seems to incline to the earth. Ovid, however, gives them different names, calling them Pyroeis, Eous, Ethon, and Phlegon. In

the cut above, but two of these horses appear-the other two perchance had taken fright, and run away. This cut we will now proceed to explain.

Sol had a son by Clymene named Phaeton. Phaeton having received some affront from Epaphas, a son of Jupiter, tending to his disparagement, determined to demonstrate to the whole world the nobleness of his birth. To accomplish this object, he repaired to his father, and obtained from him an oath that he would grant him whatsoever he might ask. He then requested the privilege of driving his father's horses one day. Startled at the mad proposal, and yet being bound by his oath, Sol remonstrated with him on the impropriety of such an intention, setting before him in the clearest light the hazardous nature of the undertaking. But Phaeton was not to be shaken in his purpose. He insisted on the fulfilment of his father's promise, who consequently was bound to comply. Phaeton exulting at the glorious prospect before him, mounted the dread chariot, and set forward. But being frightened at the sight of the sign Scorpio, he turned the coursers from their wonted path; which they perceiving took fright,

and dashed about at random, Phaeton being unable to control those fiery steeds which none but the experienced hand of his father could guide. And now they were rapidly approaching the earth, and by their approximation had already set it on fire. Jupiter from his Empyrean height beheld the scene, and, to prevent a

13

universal conflagration, launched forth a mighty thun-
derbolt, and precipitated Phaeton headlong to the earth.
The sisters of Phaeton, Lampethusa, Lampetia, and
Phæthusa, (called the Heliades,) incessantly deplored
his fate, and were at length transformed into poplars
weeping amber instead of tears.

THE ELEPHANT.

"The human race excepted, the Elephant is the most respectable of animals. In size he surpasses all other terrestrial creatures, and in understanding he is Of all the brute creation, the inferior only to man. elephant, the dog, the ape, the beaver, are all most admirable for their sagacity; but the genius of the dog is only borrowed, being instructed by man in almost every thing he knows; the monkey has only the appearance of wisdom; and the beaver is only sensible with regard to himself, and those of his species. The Elephant is superior to them all three; he unites all their most eminent qualities. The hand is the principal organ of the monkey's dexterity; the Elephant with his trunk, which serves him instead of arms and hands, with which he can lift up and seize the smallest as well as the largest objects, carry them to his mouth, place them on his back, hold them, or throw them far off, has the same dexterity as the monkey, and at the same time the tractableness of the dog; he is like him susceptible of gratitude, capable of strong attachment; he uses himself to man without reluctance, and submits to him, not so much by force, as by good treatment; he serves him with zeal, intelligence, and fideli

ty; in fine, the elephant, like the beaver, loves the
society of his equals, and makes them understand him.
They are often seen to assemble together, disperse, act
in concert, and if they do not erect buildings, and do
not work in common, it is perhaps for want of room
only, and tranquillity; for men have very anciently
multiplied in all the regions inhabited by the elephant';
he consequently lives in fear and anxiety, and is no-
where a peaceful possessor of a space large and secure
enough to establish his habitation on a settled spot.
Every being in nature has his real price, and relative
value; to judge of both in the elephant, we must allow
him at least the judgment of the beaver, the dexterity
of the monkey, the sentiment of the dog, and, to add to
these qualifications, the peculiar advantages of strength,
size, and longevity. We must not forget his arms, or
his defence, with which he can pierce through and con-
quer the lion. We must observe, that he shakes the
ground at every step; that with his trunk he roots up
trees; that with the strength of his body he makes a
breach in a wall; that being terrible by his force, he is
invincible by the resistance only of his enormous mass,
and by the thickness of the leather which covers it;

that he can carry on his back a tower armed in war, they waste a large territory in about an hour's time; with a number of men; that he alone oves machines, for this reason the Indians and Le Negroes take great and carries burthens which six horses cannot cve. pains to prevent their visits, and to drive them away, To this prodigious strength he joins courage, prudence by making a great noise, and great fires; notwithstandcoolness, and exact obedience: he preserves moderationg these precautions, however, the elephants often even in his most violent passion; he is more constar. take possession of them, drive away the cattle and men, than impetuous in love; in anger he does not forget and sometimes pull down their cottages. It is difficult his friends; he never attacks any but those who have to frighten them, as they are little susceptible of fear; given him offence; he remembers favours as long nothing can stop them but fireworks, and crackers injuries having no taste for flesh, and feeding chiefly thrown amongst them, the sudden effect of which, often upon vegetables, he is not naturally an enemy to repeated, forces them sometimes to turn back. It is other animals; he is beloved by them all, since all of very difficult to part them, for they commonly attack them respect him, and have no cause to fear him. For their enemies all together, proceed unconcerned, or these reasons, men have had at all times a veneration turn back. for this great, this first of animals. The ancients considered the Elephant as a prodigy, a miracle of nature they have much exaggerated his natural faculties; they attribute to him, without hesitation, not only intellectual qualities, but moral virtues.

"The female Elephant goes two years with young; when she is in that condition the male never conjoins with her. They only bring forth a young one, which has teeth as soon as brought forth; he is then larger than a boar; yet his tusks are not visible, they appear soon after, and at six months old are some inches in length; at that age, the Elephant is larger than an ox, and the tusks continue to increase till he is advanced in years.

"In a wild state, the Elephant is neither bloody nor ferocious; his manners are social; he seldom wanders alone; he commonly walks in company, the oldest leads the herd, the next in age drives them, and forms the rear; the young and the weak are in the middle. "It is very easy to tame the Elephant. As he is the The females carry their young, and hold them close strongest and most rational of animals, he is more serwith their trunks. They only observe this order, how-viceable than any of them; but he was formerly supever, in perilous marches, when they go to feed on posed to feel his servile condition, and never to couple cultivated lands; they walk or travel with less precau- in a domestic state. This, however, has been found to tion in forests and solitary places, but still keeping at be an erroneous opinion. such a moderate distance from each other as to be able to give mutual assistance and seasonable warnings of danger. Some, however, straggle, and remain behi the others; none but these are attacked by hunters, for a small army would be requisite to assail the whole herd, and they could not conquer without a great loss of men; it is even dangerous to do them the least injury; they go straight to the offender, and, notwithstanding the weight of their body, they walk so fast as that they easily overtake the lightest man in running; they pierce him through with their tusks, throw him against a stone, and tread him under their feet; but it is only when they have been provoked, that they become so furious and implacable. It is said, that when they have been once attacked by men, or have fallen into a snare, they never forget it, and seek for revenge on all occasions. As they have an exquisite sense of smelling, perhaps more perfect than any other animal, owing to the large extent of their nose, they smell a man at a great distance, and could easily follow him by the track. These animals are fond of the banks of rivers, deep valleys, shady places, and marshy grounds; they cannot subsist a long while without water, and they make it thick and muddy before they drink; they often fill their trunks with it, either to convey it to their mouth, or to cool their nose, and to amuse themselves in sprinkling it around them; they cannot support cold, and suffer equally from excessive heat, for, to avoid the burning rays of the sun, they penetrate into the thickest forests. They also bathe often in the water; the enormous size of their body is rather an advantage to them in swimming, and they do not swim so deep in the water as other animals; besides, the length of their trunk, which they erect, and through which they breathe, takes from them all fear of being drowned.

"Their common food is roots, herbs, leaves, and young branches; they also eat fruit and corn, but they have a dislike to flesh and fish. When one of them finds abundant pasture, he calls the others, and invites them to come and feed with him. As they want a great quantity of fodder, they often change their place, and when they find cultivated lands, they make a prodigious waste; their bodies being of an enormous weight, they destroy ten times more with their feet than they consume for their food, which may be reckoned at the rate of one hundred and fifty pounds of grass daily. As they never feed but in great numbers,

"There is, therefore, no domestic Elephant but has been wild before; and the manner of taking, taming, and bringing them into submission, deserves particular attention. In the middle of forests, and in the vicinity of the places which they frequent, a large space is chosen, and encircled with palisadoes; the strongest trees of the forest serve instead of stakes, to which cross pieces of timber are fastened, which support the other stakes; a man may easily pass through this palisado; there is another great opening, through which the Elephant may go in, with a trap hanging over it, or a gate, which is shut behind him: to bring him to that enclosure, he must be enticed by a tame female ready to take the male; and when her leader thinks she is near enough to be heard, he obliges her to indicate by her cries the condition she is in; the wild male answers immediately, and begins his march to join her; she repeats her call now and then, and arrives first to the first enclosure, where the male, following her track, enters through the same gate. As soon as he perceives himself shut up, his ardour vanishes, and when he discovers the hunters, he becomes furious; they throw at him ropes with a running knot to stop him; they fetter his legs and his trunk; they bring two tame Elephants, led by dexterous men, and try to tie them with the wild Elephant; and at last, by dint of dexterity, strength, terror, and caresses, they succeed in taming him in a few days.

(To be continued.)

BIOGRAPHY.

THE "VENERABLE" BENEDICT JOSEPH LABRE. (Concluded.)

His next steps were pilgrimages. First he went to Loretto, "from tender devotion to the Blessed Virgin, whom he looked on as his mother;" next to Assissium, the birth-place of St. Francis, where he, according to custom, got a small blessed cord, which he constantly wore; then he went to Rome, where he sojourned for eight or nine months, and wept "in the presence of the tomb of the holy apostles ;" afterwards he visited the tomb of St. Romuald at Fabrieno, where the inhabitants immediately began to look upon him as a saint; from thence he returned to Loretto; he then journeyed to Naples, and had the pleasure of seeing the blood of St. Januarius, which would not liquify when the French

In what

supposed would end his memoirs. But no.
ever odour he lived, as he "died in the odour of sanc-
tity," an enthusiasm seized some persons to touch La-
bre dead, who, when living, was touchless. Labre
being deceased, was competent to work miracles; ac-
cordingly he stretched out his left hand, and laid hold
on the board of one of the benches. On Easter-day.
being a holiday, he worked more miracles, and wonde.s
more wonderful than ever were wondered at in our
days, as may be seen at large in the aforesaid volume,
entitled-"The life of the venerable Benedict Joseph
Labre, who died at Rome, in the odour of sanctity."
London Every Day Book.

entered Naples, till the French General threatened the |
priests who performed the miracle that the city would
suffer, if the saint remained obstinate; and in short,
says the Rev. Vicar General of the London district,
"there was hardly any famous place of devotion in
Europe which was not visited by this servant of God."
To follow Labre's other goings to and fro would be
tedious suffice it to say that at one of his Loretto trips
some people offered him an abode, in order to save him
the trouble of going every night to a barn at a great
distance; but as they had prepared a room for him with
a bed in it, he thought this lodging was too sumptuous;
and he therefore retired into a hole cut out of the rock
under the street. Labre at last favoured the city of
Rome by his fixed residence, and sanctified the Am-
phitheatre of Flavian by making his home in a hole of
the ancient ruins.

LEGENDS.

The monks of the dark ages imagined a saint to be holy in proportion to his fathiness. They said St. Ignatius delighted to appear abroad in dirty old shoes

In this hole of sufficient depth to hold and shelter him in a tolerable degree from the weather, he depos--that he never used a comb, but let his hair get matited himself every night for several years. He em- ted, and religiously abstained from paring his nails. ployed the whole of every day, sometimes in one One saint attained to such piety as to have nearly three church, and sometimes in another, praying most com- hundred patches on his inexpressibles, which after his monly upon his knees, and at other times standing, and death were hung up in public as an incentive to emualways keeping his body as still as if he were a statue. lation. St. Francis discovered by certain experience Labre's daily exercise in fasting and lifelessness re- that the devils were frightened away by such kind of duced him to so helpless a state, that a beggar had com- economy, and that clean clothing animated them to passion on him, and gave him a recommendation to a tempt and seduce the wearers; and one of their heroes hospital, where, "by taking medicines proper for his declares that the purest souls are in the dirtiest bodies. disorder, and more substantial food, he soon grew well;" In the life of St. Francis we find, among other but relapsing into his "constant, uniform, and hidden grotesque miracles, that he preached a sermon in life," he became worse. This opportunity of exhibiting desert, where he collected an immense audience, as the Labre's virtues is not neglected by Labre's biographer, birds shrilly warbled at every sentence; and when who minutely informs us of several particulars. 1st. left off, they dispersed into four companies, to report his He was so careful to observe the law of silence, that in sermon to all the birds in the universe. He grew so the course of a whole month, scarcely any one could intimate with a nightingale, that when a nest of swalhear him speak so much as a few words. 2dly. He lows began to babble, he hushed them by desiring them lived in the midst of Rome as if he had lived in the not to tittle-tattle of their sister the nightingale ... midst of a desert. 3dly. He led a life of the greatest tacked by a wolf, he, with only the sign manual of me self-denial, destitute of every thing, disengaged from cross, held a long dialogue with his rabid assailant, till every earthly affection, unnoticed by all mankind, de- the wolf, meek as a lap-dog, putting his paws into the siring no other riches than poverty, no other pleasures hands of the saint, followed him through the town, and than mortification, no other distinction than that of became half a Christian. This same St. Francis had being the object of universal contempt. 4thly. He in- such a detestation of the good things of this world, dulged in rigorous poverty, exposed to the vicissitudes that he would never suffer his followers to touch and inclemencies of the weather, without shelter money. St. Philip Nereius, too, was such a lover of against the cold of winter or the heat of summer, wear-poverty, that he frequently prayed that God would bring ing old clothes, or rather rags, eating very coarse food, him to such a state as to stand in need of a penny, and and for three years living in the "hole in the wall." find nobody that would give him one. 5thly. To his privations of all wordly goods, he joined an almost continual abstinence, frequent fasts, nightly vigils, lively and insupportable pains from particular mortifications, and two painful tumours which covered both his knees, from resting the whole weight of his body on them when he prayed. 6thly. "He looked upon himself as one of the greatest of sinners ;" and this was the reason why "he chose to lead a life of reproach and contempt;" why he herded "among the multitude of poor beggars;" "why he chose to cover himself with rags and tatters instead of garments; why he chose to place a barrier of disgust between himself and mankind;""why he abandoned himself to the bites of disagreeable insects;" and why he coveted to be covered with filthy blotches.

Of the fables of this period, the legend of St. Nicholas and the naked boys in the tub is a characteristic specimen. The fame of Nicholas's virtues was so great, that an Asiatic gentleman, on sending his two sons to Athens for education, ordered them to call on the bishop for his benediction, but it being late in the day when they arrived at Mira, they thought proper to defer their visit till the morrow. They accordingly took lodgings at an inn, where the host, in order to secure their baggage and effects to himself, murdered them in their sleep, and having cut them in pieces, he salted them and put them in a pickle tub with some pork, meaning to sell them as such. The bishop, however, having had a vision of this impious transaction, immediately resorted to the inn, and calling the landlord to him, reproached him for his horrid villany, when the man, perceiving that he was discovered, confessed his crime, and entreated the Bishop to intercede with the Almighty for his pardon; upon which the Bishop did beseech Almighty God not only to pardon the murderer, but also for the glory of his name to restore life to the poor innocents who had been so inhumanly put to death. The saint had hardly finished his prayer, when the mangled and detached pieces were by divine power reunited, and the youths perceiving they were alive again, threw themselves at the feet of the holy man to embrace and to kiss him: but the Bishop, not suffering their humiliation, raised them up, and exhorted them to return thanks to God alone for

Labre's biographer, who was also his confessor, says that his "appearance was disagreeable and forbidding, his legs were half naked, his clothes were tied round the waist with an old cord, his head was uncombed, he was badly clothed and wrapped up in an old and ragged coat, and in his outward appearance he seemed to be the most miserable beggar that I had ever seen." His biographer further says, "I never heard his confession but in a confessional, on purpose that there might be some kind of separation betwixt us." The holy father's lively reason for this precaution, any history of insects with the word "pediculus" will describe accurately.

Thus Labre lived and died; and here it might be