during the siege of Troy, Micyllus, who had more curiosity on the subject than Mr. Lowe, eagerly asks him whether the Homeric narrative was in accordance with fact. 'Homer?' replies the cock, what should he know about it? Why, he was a camel in Bactria during the whole time of the siege.'

By way of convincing Micyllus that all is not gold which glitters, the cock proposes that they shall go round and inspect the interiors of some of these envied houses. He has a charm, taught him by Mercury, by which they may do this, unseen themselves. The reader of Le Sage's works will, perhaps, see in this story the original of Le Diable Boiteux.

manner.

Of all Lucian's works, perhaps the Timon might be selected as the most interesting. The story of the great misanthrope commends itself to Lucian's mind as well as to Shakespeare's; but the two writers have handled it in a very different Shakespeare's creative power seized on the whole soul and being of the distraught Athenian, not without a certain sympathy kindled within him by a spirit at war with itself-such a mood as we trace at times in other parts of his works, as in the melancholy of Hamlet and of Jaques, or in the rage of Lear. But to Lucian the character of Timon was merely matter for mirth -one more chapter in the book of human foibles, and one more theme for his laughter. The story was a suggestive text for shrewd satire on the meanness and hollowness of the people among whom we have to live, and the vanity of the things which they prize. And so he has treated the subject.

Lucian's satire, as we have said, was always of the serener sort. This quality, and a certain air of self-complacency about his writings, seem to make it likely that they were, for the most part, the studies of his later years. They suggest the mood of a man for whom the turmoil of life is over, and who may now enjoy his leisure and survey mankind and their absurdities from his easy chair. Probably he laughed on, and wrote on, till pretty near the close of his long life. Of the particulars of his death we have no trustworthy record. At all events he was not the man to make such an exit as Swift anticipated for himself-dying for rage like a poisoned rat in a hole.' Suidas indeed says that he was worried to death by dogs; but Suidas, like John Foxe the martyrologist, is fond of discovering these dreadful and exceptional forms of death in the history of persecutors and other obnoxious persons. As this story appears to lack the support of any authentic testimony, it has been generally discarded; and we may venture rather to imagine the old jester playing his part to the last, and passing away with some quiet sarcasm at the expense of that life which he had retained so long, and which with all its concerns he always professed to hold in so little esteem. He was conviva satur:

Lusisti satis, edisti satis, atque bibisti:
Tempus abire tibi est.

He would not accept the rules of the Epicurean philosophy; but thus far, we should think, he must have been practically in accord with Horace.

C. G. PROWETT.

the ratio of mortality in the British Mercantile Marine is naturally large. Happily dead seamen leave a little property behind them, in the form of unpaid wages and clothes; and the inquiry denied to their lives is accorded to their property. The Government steps in as executor to working seamen-a remunerative office, which leads incidentally to the registration in general terms of the assumed cause of death. The Government, does not, however, act as executor to the masters captains, about 25,000 in number, so that nobody knows how many master mariners die on the high seas, much less 'whoe killed' them, or unto whome the ship did belong.'

or

While the annual Statistical Abstract of the Health of the Navy, affecting about 47,000 adults, occupies about 85 pages of print, the return relative to the deaths amongst 196,000 merchant seamen occupies two pages of very widely spaced type. This compression

necessitates the absence of all explanation as to how the figures are arrived at, or of the proportion they bear to the living men amongst whom the mortality occurs. Assuming for the moment the correctness of the causes of death assigned in the return, it is still necessary to remember that the figures do not include seamen dying after their arrival and discharge within the United Kingdom, nor is any allusion made to the numbers who are landed at home in a dying state. In this and other particulars the mortality return for the Mercantile Marine excludes numerous cases included in that for the Royal Navy. Menof-war's men are also subject to death from causes unknown to merchant seamen; for example, in the Health of the Navy for 1872, five men are recorded as dying from wounds in action, and five others from injuries received in gunnery exercises. The ages are not recorded

in the Naval Abstract, but the proportion of mortality in the Mercantile Return above 50 years of age is exceedingly small (18'in every 1,000 deaths)-those of masters being excluded from the return. More than two-thirds of the mortality at known ages occurs in the Merchant Navy when under 30 years of age. It is not, therefore, probable that the average age when life terminates whilst serving in the Royal Navy is much lower than that amongst merchant seamen afloat. Whatever way the two mortality returns be viewed, there seems no injustice to the merchant service in an equal comparison.

The ratio of mortality in that portion of the Mercantile Marine, which is on the high seas and abroad, is nearly twice that of miners between the ages of 15 and 65 years; but this comparison is obviously unfair to the mining population, as miners discharged from work in a dying state are still included in the Registrar-General's Return. The ratio of mortality in the Royal Navy is only one-third that of the Mercantile Marine. To reduce the mortality in the latter to one-third of what it is would make an enormous difference. 1,522 merchant seamen would then die annually instead of 4,564. In other words, were the ratio of mortality similar to that of the Queen's service, upwards of 3,000 merchant seamen would be preserved alive who now annually die.

That the absence of all legal security to life at sea is responsible for some of this loss appears from a closer examination of the mortality returns. Thus, whilst about onethird of the mortality in the Royal Navy is recorded as caused by violence, two-thirds is the ratio of violent deaths in the Mercantile Marine. But as to how and whoe killed them, and unto whome the ship did belong,' modern shipping interest law does not lett inquiry

lett inquiry be made concerning the death of a man whoe hath beene killed in a ship, vessell, or boate,' &c., was all very well in the dark ages. In the year of grace 1871, 2,189 lives, of which 1,500 were seamen, were lost by British shipwrecks, and 31,051 others were imperilled; yet not a single individual was charged with manslaughter for any one of the lives so lost, or with any other crime for imperilling the lives of 31,000 other human beings. True, the property involved did come within reach of the law in certain cases, so that, out of at least 3,372 captains who endangered or lost human life, 53 officers had their certificates of competency suspended or cancelled for the loss, damages, or abandonment of ships,' and 74 officers were acquitted on legal investigations as to the property lost. Yet the author of Shipwrecks, who is publicly stated to be the Marine Secretary of the Board of Trade, writing in 1871 what is republished in 1873, openly states that shipwrecks and marine disasters, so far from always being what is irreverently and generally termed "the act of God," are frequently nothing less than the result of the culpable negligence or direct and premeditated misdeeds of men. Shipwrecks, so far from arising from unknown and unintelligible and unpreventible causes, are but too often the result of direct villanies, which can and ought to be punished with as little sentimentality, and as vigorously, as any other and more common act of swindling, fraud, or murder.' So then direct villanies,' 'swindling,' 'fraud,' or 'murder' deprived some of those 2,189 men of life, and imperilled the lives of some of the 31,000 others; yet not a single 'villain,' 'swindler,' 'fraudulent owner,' or 'murderer' was in 1871 placed on his trial for any one of these series.

6

Had this mortality occurred on land, the coroner would have stepped in to inquire whoe killed them,' and even if no 'direct villanies' appeared, culpable negli gence is a crime placed by the law on a level with culpable homicide. Before the Mercantile Shipping Act was passed in 1854, the common law appears to have been capable of reaching deaths by violence on the high seas, at least if the ships were connected in any way with Scotland. The Marine Serretary of the Board of Trade quotes, in his pamphlet on shipwrecks, the judgment given by three Scotch Judges in the case of a ship wrecked in 1850, before the present Shipping Act was passed. Four of the lives lost were near relations of the Lord Justice General-a fact that was probably not without its effect upon the Procurator Fiscal. The judgment on the captain and mate reads thus:

duty, and loss of life. Held-1st, that Culpable homicide-culpable neglect of these were substantially one charge whenever an accident happened which occasioned loss of life; 2nd, direction to jury that when the Crown had proved an accident by loss of life in a vessel under the panel's command, it lay on them to prove their innocence of all blame.

The Lord Justice Clerk, in charging the jury, observed that, as had been remarked in many cases, there really was no difference between the crime of culpable homicide and culpable and reckless neglect of duty

which resulted in the loss of life; and the jury must, therefore, under their charge, consider the case as one of culpable homiof the crime of culpable homicide; if incide. Intention to do wrong was not part tention was proved under such a charge it would amount to murder. The crime of culpable homicide was committed whenever a person unintentionally committed an act whereby the life of another was lost, or where he had failed to perform his duty, when charged with the preservation of life, without having a sufficient excuse for such neglect, and life was lost in consequence.

...

The principle of law the Court was bound to lay down to the jury. . . consisted in this: That any person placed in a situation in which his acts may affect the safety of others, must take all precautions

to guard against the risk to them arising from what he is doing.

Though no villany' was proved or even suspected in this case, the mate was sentenced to seven years' transportation, and the captain to eighteen months' imprisonment, for the neglect of duty which proved fatal to one hundred persons. Moreover, the Judges laid it down that ' grave criminal responsibility would arise' also 'to the proprietor who should fail to have sufficient boats in the first instance, or refused proper allowance to have them maintained;' thus showing that the laws of Scotland so recently as 1850 lett inquiry be made unto whome the ship did be

long.'

What the withdrawal of legal protection to life from seamen implies may be estimated by contrasting the above judgment with the Marine Secretary's statement in Shipwrecks, that there are innumerable preventible losses on our coasts and at sea.' Yet not a single conviction for loss of life followed upon any one of these innumerable preventible losses on our coasts and at sea.' 'We fully accept the fact,' proceeds the Marine Secretary, 'that rotten, overladen, and otherwise unseaworthy ships are sent to sea from ports in "this our United Kingdom." We also accept the fact that such ships are sometimes knowingly sent to sea, and that loss of life is too often the result.' Yet nobody is placed on his trial for manslaughter. Nay, the Marine Secretary, more prudent than Mr. Plimsoll, does not convey a hint 'unto whome the ships did belong.' Still these ships must have some owners; and it is not a little remarkable that the ownership of missing and lost vessels is so carefully hidden. The annual wrecks, &c., are tabulated by the Board of Trade, in thirty-nine tables occupying 167 pages of figures, in the Abstracts of Wrecks, &c., but not a hint is con

veyed in all these ponderous pages that the wrecked ships had any owners at all. Lloyd's Analysis of Wrecks, 1868-71, contains 156 pages of figures, but not a hint in any case as to the ownership. A Registry of Shipowners which would show how many vessels each had owned during a course of years, and what the mortality had been under their several cares would be instructive. It would be something novel to have such a return based upon the loss of life rather than upon the loss of property. It is, perhaps, natural that a Board of Trade should have profound regard for property and little or none for human life; for it may be supposed that the trade in life is an accident of commercial adventures. Still a Registry of Shiplosers would be highly instructive.

It is difficult to understand for what purpose the 167 pages of wreck tables are annually drawn up by the Board of Trade, unless it be to darken knowledge. It is impossible to deduce from them such common-place information as to how many British ships are annually lost, and what ratio these bear to the whole number registered within the United Kingdom? The matter upon at least one hundred pages might be usefully exchanged for a registration of the names of shipowners who have lost ships, giving the years in which they were lost, the number of persons thus drowned or killed, and the number of other lives thus imperilled. This infor mation exists within the Board of Trade, and there could therefore be no physical difficulty in substituting these facts for the irrelevant matter now furnished. It is now officially stated that the total number of ships which, according to the facts reported, appear to have foundered or to have been otherwise totally lost on, or near, the coasts of the United Kingdom (alone) from unseaworthiness, unsound gear, &c., in