T. ISAAC'S CATHEDRAL, probably the finest church in Northern Europe, stands in the great square called Isaac's Place, which extends to the banks of the Neva. It occupies the site of a church originally built by Peter the Great, and dedicated to St. Isaac of Dalmatia, because the city of St. Petersburg was founded on the day sacred to him. Like nearly all of the Greek churches, it is in the form of a Greek cross, with four equal sides, and is surmounted with a cupola of copper overlaid with gold, supported by pillars of polished granite. Each of the four grand entrances is reached by three flights of granite steps, each entire flight chiselled from a single block. The four porticos have monolithic granite columns sixty feet in height, with Corinthian capitals in bronze.

The magnificent proportions of this cathedral, the grand simplicity of its architecture and its imposing situation strike the visitor with awe as he approaches it from the side of the square facing the river. On the left is the Admiralty, its side six hundred and fifty feet in length, its front extending half a mile to the square of the Winter Palace; on the right, the Senate-House and the Holy Synod; and in its front is the colossal equestrian statue of Peter the Great.

The interior of St. Isaac's is as remarkable for its magnificence of decoration as is the

exterior for its grandeur and sublimity. Polished variegated marbles of every hue-all from the Russian dominions-splendid columns of malachite and of lapis-lazuli, gilded bronze-work and pictures and mosaics by Russian artists present a coup d'œil almost impossible to describe. The inmost shrine, presented by Mr. Demidoff, is valued at a million rubles. The Royal Door of the ikonastas, or screen, is of bronze, and is twenty-three feet in height by fifteen in breadth. To one accustomed to our plainer edifices of worship St. Isaac's appears to have an exuberance of decoration, but the grand ceremonial of the Greek Church demands corresponding surroundings.

The cathedral is a comparatively new building even where everything is of the present, having been begun in 1819 by Alexander I., and consecrated in 1858 by Alexander II. Its foundation alone, of piles driven into the swampy soil, is said to have cost over a million dollars. It was built by M. Montferrand. a French architect, who erected also the great Alexander column. If he had never accomplished any other works, these two ought to immortalize his name.

The equestrian statue of Peter the Great is one of the most noted monuments of Europe. The emperor is reining in his horse on the brink of a precipice, a serpent writhing under his charger's feet, being emblematic of the difficulties which beset the founder of Russia's greatness in the beginning. The block of granite which forms the pedestal weighs fifteen hundred tons, and was brought from

OMER is at least the name, if nothing more, of the greatest poet of antiquity-the first of the illustrious line of singers, or minstrels, who presented in two marvellous epics the language, the poetry, the history, the art and the beautiful mythology of Greece when the morning dews clustered upon her brow. The Iliad shows us a part of the siege of Troy, and the Odyssey tells the story of the wanderings of Odysseus, or Ulysses, from that siege to his home in the "little sea-girt isle of Ithaca."

Of the period and personality of Homer there is great doubt. The Greek Lives of him are notoriously fictitious, and we are left to conjecture in a range of time from 1100 to 850 B. C. Herodotus, who lived about the middle of the fifth century before Christ, makes him the contemporary of Hesiod at the later date. Among the nine cities which have contended for the honor of giving him birth, Smyrna seems to have the strongest claim, if there be any valid claim: a local legend declares him to be the offspring of a river and a nymph; which may, indeed, be only a poetical way of eulogizing his Muse.

In the latest period since the days of Wolf and Niebuhr a school of German critics has denied Homer's personality entirely, but English scholars have enlisted themselves on the other side, declaring him to be

proved an Asiatic Greek well versed in the dialect of his day and presenting in his two epics the best specimens of the highly cultivated Ionic. Thus the literary period is fixed, and internal evidence declares the identity of the poet. Against this view, the German scholars maintain that his poems are the work of many hands and the development of a long period; that for centuries they existed only in the memories and on the lips of rhapsodists, many of whom, being poets as well as reciters and contending for prizes at the games, would alter, improve and add to what they recited. To this it may be answered that there was a law of Athens requiring the Homeric poems to be read publicly-" with prompting "—whenever the festival of the Panathenæa, or festival in honor of Minerva, was celebrated. This law is at variance with the theory of the German critics. Again, the critics assert that Homer was only an eponym for the ancestor of the Homeride of Chios. Leaving the critics to disagree, the world is glad that it has these precious works, and that they had a chief author whom we are all satisfied to call Homer. His poems have been translated into all civilized languages. The principal versions in English are those of Chapman, Pope, Cowper, Earl Derby and William Cullen Bryant. While, perhaps, all the others are nearer to the Greek in delicate points of scholarship, the delightful tinkling of Pope's pentameter couplet has caused it to be the most popular.

'Tis thine, fair Thetis, the command to lay, And Vulcan's joy and duty to obey."

To whom the mournful mother thus replies (The crystal drops stood trembling in her eyes):

4:

"O Vulcan say, was ever breast divine
So pierced with sorrows, so o'erwhelmed, as
mine?

Of all the goddesses, did Jove prepare
For Thetis only such a weight of care-
I, only I, of all the watery race,
By force subjected to a man's embrace,
Who, sinking now with age and sorrow, pays
The mighty fine imposed on length of days?
Sprung from my bed, a godlike hero came-
The bravest, sure, that ever bore the name;
Like some fair plant beneath my careful
hand

He grew, he flourished, and he graced the land.

To Troy I sent him, but his native shore Never-ah, never!-shall receive him more; Even while he lives he wastes with secret

woe,

Nor I, a goddess, can retard the blow. Robbed of the prize the Grecian suffrage

gave,

The king of nations forced his royal slave: For this he grieved, and till the Greeks oppressed

Required his arm he sorrowed unredressed. Large gifts they promise, and their elders

send;

In vain he arms not, but permits his friend His arms, his steeds, his forces, to employ ; He marches, combats, almost conquers Troy; Then, slain by Phoebus-Hector had the

name

At once resigns his armor, life and fame.

But thou, in pity, by my prayer be won: Grace with immortal arms this short-lived son,

And to the field in martial pomp restore, To shine with glory till he shines no more."

To her the artist-god: "Thy griefs resign,
Secure what Vulcan can is ever thine.
Oh, could I hide him from the Fates as well,
Or with these hands the cruel stroke repel,
As I shall forge most envied arms, the gaze
Of wondering ages and the world's amaze !”

Thus having said, the father of the fires
To the black labors of his forge retires.
Soon as he bade them blow the bellows turned
Their iron mouths, and where the furnace
burned

Resounding breathed; at once the blast expires,

And twenty forges catch at once the fires. Just as the god directs, now loud, now low, They raise a tempest or they gently blow; In hissing flames huge silver bars are rolled, And stubborn brass and tin and solid gold; Before, deep-fixed, the eternal anvils stand; The ponderous hammer loads his better hand, His left with tongs turns the vexed metal round,

And thick, strong strokes the doubling vaults rebound.

Then first he formed the immense and solid shield.

Rich various artifice emblazed the field;
Its utmost verge a threefold circle bound;
A silver chain suspends the
massy round;
Five ample plates the broad expanse com-

pose,

And godlike labors on the surface rose.