The King of t/ie Beasts. 25 



" A man huge of limb, 

 Grey-eyed, with crisp-curled hair 'twixt black and brown. 

 Who had a lion's skin cast over him. 

 So wrought with gold that the fell showed but dim 

 Betwixt the shreds, and in his hand he bore 

 A mi^ty dub." 



It adds a dignity to the light offence of the fleet maiden 

 and her lover that for their disregard of her groves they 

 joined Cybele's chariot-team ; and even the firmament 

 borrows a splendour from its terrific lion-constellation. 

 Homer himself is the grander for his lions, and what 

 notable blanks there would have been on the gates and 

 waUs of fortress and palace and city had there been no lion 

 for the sculptor, and what beauties been missing on canvas 

 and in literature. 



Egjpt was so indiscriminate in her zoological reverences 

 that it adds little to the dignity of the lion, that the 

 Pharaoh who bowed before beetles should have paid it 

 sacred honours, though there is something originally fine in 

 the fact that the priests of the " Lion-town " chanted during 

 its meal-times to the beasts as they crunched their bones. 

 Our chiurch-gargoyles are said to be a relic of this worship 

 by the Nile, a vestige of the old-world homage paid to Leo, 

 in the ascendant at the rising of the Great River; and 

 whether this be true or not — and we owe a great deal more 

 to the pagans than unfortunately, "Pagafi being dead this 

 many a day," we can ever repay them — the Florentines 

 supply a half-way Unk in the coronation of the lions on St. 

 John's Day, the SoUeone, when the sun enters that sign. 



Individuals dignified with lion compliments are "too 

 numerous for specification." But they include British 

 sailors ("the lion-spirits that tread the deck") and British 

 soldiers (" the lion-heart of Bricish fortitude ") ; most British 

 kings, from Richard I., "monarch of the lion-heart," to 

 George I XL, and a very large number of heroes from St 



