90 LOVE S MEINIE. 



A poor and unwarlike simile, it seems ! But 

 in the next book, when Ulysses stands with 

 his bow lifted, and Telemachus has brought 

 the lances, and laid them at his feet, and 

 Athena comes to his side to encourage him, — 

 do you recollect the gist of her speech ? " You 

 fought," she says, " nine years for the sake 

 of Helen, and for another's house : — now, re- 

 turned, after all those wanderings, and under 

 your own roof, for it, and its treasures, will 

 you not fight, then ? " And she herself flies 

 up to the house-roof, and thence, in the form 

 of the swallozv, guides the arrows of vengeance 

 for the violation of the sanctities of home. 



80. To-day, then, I believe verily for the 

 first time, I have been able to put before you 

 some means of guidance to understand the 

 beauty of the bird which lives with you in 

 your own houses, and which purifies for you, 

 from its insect pestilence, the air that you 

 breathe. Thus the sweet domestic thing has 

 done, for men, at least these four thousand 

 years. She has been their companion, not of 

 the home merely, but of the hearth, and the 

 threshold ; companion only endeared by depar- 

 ture, and showing better her loving-kindness 



