;P F UU SN,. [OCTOBER 5, 1861.


 GREECE,-ITS HUMOUROUS HISTORY.
 BY M'ASSA HOYLE.
 Illustrated with Sketches taken on the Spot.
 CHAPTER THE THIRD.
 As the chronology of the history of Greece previous to the first
 Olympiad is involved in utter obscurity, those historians who "like to be
 particular in dates," only utter-obscurity themselves whef they attempt
 to fix the exact times of important events. However, it appears
 probable that the heroic age, as it is termed,-which is the period
 between the appearance of the Hellenes and the return of the Greeks
 from Troy,-lasted about two hundred years. It is perhaps super-
 fluous to remark that it was termed the heroic age from the extra-
 ordinary number ofheroes who flourished (their swords) about that
 time. Among these great creatures HERACLEs appears not only to
 be as a man A one, but also a won-derful man. He seems to have
 done more than any mortal or immortal before or after him; and
 were it not for the trifling drawback that everything narrated of him
 is supposed to be invention, one might really get up something like
 enthusiasm concerning his exploits. The awkward fact, too, of his
 never having existed, is a great damper to one's admiration. He is
 said to have lived upon a heap of falsehoods and eventually to have
 died upon a pile.
 THESEUS was the stock hero of Attica. On his way to Athens, the
 throne of which lie was bent on claiming,-for he was the son of
 .ErG.:is, King of Athens, and intended shortly to inform his distant
 parent of that fact,-he performed the most wonderful feats with a
sword,-oeven more extraordinary than PnoPrsson HARRIsoN, or the


 champion leg-of-mutton soverers at the Holland Park fetes. He
 exterminated many robbers, and gave the snakes and toads a
 twist," much to the delight of the inhabitants. His father did not
 welcome him altogether warmly, and went so far as to attempt to
 poison him at a banquet, but eventually thought better of it, and
 did'nt. It appears that it was the annual custom for seven poor
 Crete-rs to go for an excursion to the Minotaur, a playful monster
 who invariably payed his visitors the most devouring attentions.
 This agreeable animal, who is spoken of by OVID as
 Semibovemque virum, semivirumquc bovem,
 did not prove himself half a man in his encounter with TuESEus,
 who left him shortly not even worth "half a bull," which, as all well-
 bred people are aware, is a slang term for two and sixpence. The
 secret of his escape lay in the fact of AnrADNE, daughter of MINos,
 lending him a skein of thread with which he threaded the mazes of
 the labyrinth, and "came out" of his encounter very creditably,
 making game of the miserable Minotaur, and "taking off" the indis-
 crete daughter of the KING of CRETE. She, poor thing, having gone
 right off" with him, was "left on" the Island of Naxos by the
 fickle THESEUs, who was so much taken up with his having assailed
 the Minotaur, that he neglected to take up the sail of the vessel con-
 veying him home; and as the absence of the customary black sail was
 to have been the signal to his parent that he had succeeded in his
 enterprise, the whole thing ended in a die-er calamity. Poor old
 EIGEUS was looking out for his son, when to his horror he perceived
 the fatal sail, and supposing his son to have shared the fate of the
 ordinary annual victims, he gave a hop, step, and jump, and took a
"tremendous header" from off the Cecropian rock into the sea.


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TIIESEUS'S PAPA FLINGS IIIMSELF OFF THE CECEOPIAN ROCK.


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