"The god of slaves," said they, "how can he be
More powerful than their master's deity?"

And down they cast their rods,

And muttered secret sounds that charm the servile gods.
The evil spirits their charms obey.

All in a subtle cloud they snatched the rods away,

And serpents in their place the airy jugglers lay.
Serpents in Egypt's monstrous land

Were ready still at hand,

And all at th' Old Serpent's first command:
And they, too, gaped, and they, too, hissed,
And they their threatening tails did twist;
But strait on both the Hebrew serpent flew,
Broke both their active backs, and both it slew,
And both almost at once devoured,

This last line is thoroughly appreciable by those susceptible to humour. But it will be seen that here the poet as much detracts from the authorised narrative as previously he had added to it, inasmuch as from Holy Writ we gather that Aaron's rod devoured more than two of the others, for the verse runs, "they cast down every man his rod and they became serpents: but Aaron's rod swallowed up their rods." For myself I confess I have always imagined-fancy being led thereto by a picture in an illustrated Bible which much attracted me in childhood—that the floor of the palace was fairly littered with snakes, and that no part of the miracle was quite so miraculous as Aaron's serpent-which, as depicted, was no bigger than most, and not so big as some-being able to contain all the rest. Doubtless my timid scepticism on this point was conciliated by being reminded of the extraordinary containing-capacity of other kinds of snakes, and some such zoological "fact" as the boa-constrictor swallowing a bull.

Of Cadmus, "how with the serpent's teeth he sowed the soil, and reaped an iron harvest of his toil?" from which Coleridge draws the

moral :

Who sows the serpent's teeth, let him not hope
To reap a joyous harvest. Every crime
Has, in the moment of its preparation,
Its own avenging angel, dark misgiving,
An ominous sinking at the inmost heart.

Of Iapetus whom Keats sees grasping

A serpent's plashy neck, its barbéd tongue
Squeezed from the gorge, and all its uncurl'd length
Dead and because the creature could not spit
Its poison in the eyes of conquering Jove.

Of Apollo's prowess

Who slew Phiton the serpent where he lay

Sleeping against the sun upon a day.

So far some of the worshipful reptiles of antiquity. Nor are the snake-reverences of contemporary cult forgotten. Foremost is Anantas the infinite:

That serpent old,

Which clasped the great world in its fold,

And brooded over earth and the charmed sea
Like endless, restless, drear Eternity;

and next Shesh, "whose diamond sun makes subterranean day." The poet refers here without a doubt to that fine legend of the Indian aborigines the Nagas, or "snake-men," who say that once upon a time, and perhaps they are right, they possessed the land, but were driven into the hill-fastnesses which they now inhabit by successive waves of invasion, and that their great captain and divinity-Shesh, "the king of serpents"- fled underground, and in contempt of the sunlight from which he had been exiled, created the Kanthi-stone, more brilliant than a whole rock of diamond, by the light of which he keeps the diary of the earth, and solemnly records the procession of the ages.

This Shesh is a reptile worthy of homage, and may be accepted without hesitation and in defiance of all sea-serpents, past and future, as the greatest snake on record. When Vishnu and the gods meet to extort from the sea the ichor of immortality, they pluck up from. the Himalayan range the biggest mountain in it, and this they make their churn, while around it, as the strongest tackle they could think of, they bound the serpent Shesh. And the Gods took hold of the head, and the Devils took hold of the tail, and, alternately tugging, they made the mountain spin round and round until the sea was churned into froth, and from the churning came up all the treasures of the deep, and the most precious possessions of man, and last of all Immortality. The gods and the devils scrambled for all the good things, but nothing more is said of the serpent who had been so useful, nor what he got for his services. Antiquaries in the West incline to think that he remained in the sea and became the kraken ; but the Nagas believe him to be still under the hills, dispensing fate by the light of a diamond.

When, too, Lakshmi fixes her admiring eyes upon "the azure Hari," he started at the summons of love :

Straight o'er the deep, then dimpling smooth, he rushed,
And towards th' unmeasured snakes' stupendous bed

The world's great mother, not reluctant, led.

All nature glow'd whene'er she smiled or blushed;
The king of serpents hushed

His thousand heads, where diamond mirrors blazed

That multiplied her image as he gazed.

Here we have Anantas, the ocean infinity, and Shesh in combination, with a further idea of the vast serpent forming a nuptial bed for the enamoured divinities, which is thoroughly Oriental.

The Cherokee Indians of the West have much the same legend as the Nagas of the East, and Mrs. Hemans refers to

The mighty serpent king

Midst the gray rocks, his old domain,

who is supposed to dwell in the central recesses of the mountains, the chief of the rattle-snakes, and who, though subterranean, is honoured as the "light-giver."

In the poets the sea-serpent with its

Ten million cubic miles of head,

Ten million leagues of tail,

is as purely a creature of fancy as in Sir Richard Owen's mind. But it is a delightful beast this kraken, that lives "twice five hundred fathoms deep":

Where the wind is a stranger

And the sea-snake dwells,

Where the mermaid is decking
Her green hair with shells.

Mackay's "kelpie " mounts

His steed of the water clear

And sits in his saddle of sea-weed sere.
He holds his bridle of strings of pearl,

Dug out of the depths where the sea-snakes curl,

depths so horrid that Mary Howitt would not be a diver for all the pearls of all the seas:

I have heard of things in those dismal gulfs

Like fiends that hemmed them round:

I would not lead a diver's life

For every pearl that's found.

I've heard how the sea-snake, huge and dark,
In the Arctic flood doth roll;

He hath coil'd his tail, like a cable strong,
All round and round the Pole.

They say when he stirs in the sea below

The ice-rocks split asunder

The mountains huge of the ribbéd ice
With a deafening crack like thunder.

In Darwin the great sea-worm is blue:

Two serpent-forms incumbent on the main,

Lashing the white waves, with redundant train,
Arch'd their blue necks, and shook their tow'ring crests,
And plough'd their foamy way with speckled breasts;
Then, darting fierce amid the affrighted throngs,

Rolled their red eyes, and shot their forkéd tongues.

This cerulean snake is a recurrent figure. Science knows more than one "blue" snake, though they are not really such. Who, for instance, that has ever seen one, would think of calling the "Korait" "cæruleus"? Science, however, calls the dull, lead-coloured crow of India "splendens." So let it pass. The poets, however, have "blue" snakes which they mean to be really blue. Many have water-snakes of this colour-for Virgil had such. Darwin, Mary Howitt, and Shelley have, with a natural license, blue sea-snakes. Others have land-reptiles of the same colour. Thus in Heber's admirable rendering of Pindar's address to Agesias of Syracuse:

Two scaly snakes of azure hue
Watched o'er his helpless infancy;
And, rifled from the mountain bee,

Bare on their forky tongues a harmless honey-dew.

King gives Megæra the Fury a ringlet of blue snakes, and in Congreve the Gorgon's head-dress is "blue as the vault."

While on this subject, it is very curious that the poets should perpetually speak of the "coronal" of snakes-whatever they may mean by it. Yet there is a whole genus scientifically named "coronellinæ,"

PHIL ROBINSON.

49

A

"LITTLE DRURY LANE."

LTHOUGH as far back as the time of Queen Anne we find frequent references in contemporary literature to the disreputable character of Drury Lane, yet a century previous to that period it could boast lordly mansions and noble residents. In the reign of Elizabeth it was known as the Via de Aldwych, a name that still partly survives in "Wych Street." Drury House, built towards the close of the sixteenth century, gave a new title to the thoroughfare. Close to this rose Craven House, erected by the earl of Craven for the reception of his bride, James the First's daughter, and the titular Queen of Bohemia. It was a fine mansion, shut in by iron gates, and with extensive grounds in the rear. Long after its fellows had disappeared and "the drabs and bloods of Drury Lane" had become a byword, Craven House still stood, shorn of its gardens, and converted into a public-house that bore the name of "The Queen of Bohemia," in memory of its former grandeur. To save it from falling it was pulled down in 1805, and, upon the ground being cleared, a portion of the site was taken on lease by Philip Astley, the founder of the amphitheatre, so long known by his name, and of equestrian performances in this country, for the purpose of erecting a circus. The building of such places was a much simpler affair then than it is now. The amphitheatre "over the water" was built with the wood of election hustings, and the "Olympic Pavilion " was chiefly erected out of the materials of an old French war-ship, the "Ville de Paris,"-" Wheel de Parry" he called it--which was sold, with some other naval prizes, about this time. No sooner was the lease signed than Astley proceeded to collect workmen out of the neighbouring public-houses-another peculiarity of his upon such occasions and set them to work. Seated in a little one-horse chaise that he used to drive about in, but which was scarcely capacious enough to contain his very rotund figure, from morning until night, in all weathers, he directed the operations, and saw that there was no idling or shirking. There was very little brickwork in the building : the yards and bowsprits of the ship formed the uprights and supports, VOL. CCLXI, NO. 1867.

E