The Mason-Wasps 



summer heat, as he does to this day. The 

 buildings of that period differed but little 

 from ours, at least so far as the Sparrow's 

 convenience was concerned; and the shelter 

 under the tile had been adopted long before. 

 But, when Palestine had nothing more than 

 the camel-hair tent, where did the Sparrow 

 then elect to make his home? 



When Virgil sings to us of good 

 Evander, who, preceded by his watch, two 

 Sheep-dogs, visits ^Eneas, his guest, he 

 shows him to us awakened at dawn by the 

 singing of the birds : 



Evandrum ex humlli tecto lux alma 



Et matutini volucrum sub culmine cantus. 1 



What could those birds be which, at 

 break of day, twittered under the roof of 

 the old King of Latium? I see only two: 

 the Swallow and the Sparrow, both of them 

 chanticleers of my hermitage and as punc- 

 tual as in the Saturnian days. There was 

 nothing princely about Evander's palace. 

 The poet does not conceal the fact, it was 

 a lowly roof: humili tecto, he says. Be- 

 sides, the furniture enlightens us as to the 



1 "The cheerful morn salutes Evander's eyes; 

 And songs of chirping birds invite to rise. 

 He leaves his lowly bed. 1 ' 



book viii; Dryden's translation. 

 136 



