division farina was introduced; into the second, two turtle-doves; into the third, an ape; into the fourth, a ram; into the fifth, a lamb; and into the sixth, as they did not possess an ox, a tanned hide from the sanctuary was substituted; the seventh aperture remained gaping.

Before a human victim should be offered, it was deemed best to test the arms of the god. Slender chainlets, passing from the fingers over his shoulders, descended at the back, which men pulled downward, raising to the height of his elbows his two open hands, that in approaching each other came opposite his belly. They worked them several times successively with little jerks. Then the musical instruments were hushed, and the fire roared fiercely.

The pontiffs of Moloch walked to and fro on the large stone slab, examining the multitude.

The first offering must be an individual sacrifice, an oblation perfectly voluntary, which would be effectual to incite others. But no one came forward, and the seven alleys leading from the barrier to the Colossus remained completely empty. To stimulate the people, the priests pulled from their girdles little stilettos, with which they slashed their faces. The Devotees, who had been stretched on the ground outside, were introduced into the inclosure, and a packet of horrible irons was thrown to them: each one chose his torture. They passed spits through their breasts, slit their cheeks, put upon their heads crowns of thorns; then they enlaced their arms together, and surrounding the children, they formed another great circle, ever contracting and expanding. Having reached the balustrade, they threw themselves back, only to eddy outwards again, continually attracting to them the crowd, by the vertigo of their movements, full of blood and cries.

Gradually the people, thus incited, came into the end of the alleys, and threw into the flames pearls, gold vases, cups, all their treasures, and flambeaux.

These offerings became more and more splendid, and kept multiplying. Presently a man who staggered, a man pale and hideous from terror, pushed forward a child; then could be distinguished between the hands of the Colossus a little black mass— it sank into the dark opening. The priests leaned over the edge of the large slab, and a new chant burst out, celebrating the joys of death and the renascence of eternity.

The children mounted up slowly, and as the smoke rose in lofty, whirling masses, they seemed from afar to disappear in a cloud. Not one moved. All had been securely bound hand and foot, and the dark drapery prevented them from seeing anything, and from being recognized.

Hamilcar, in a red mantle like that of the priests of Moloch, remained near the Baal, standing before the great toe of his right foot. When the fourteenth child was put in, all the people saw that he made a demonstrative gesture of horror, but quickly resuming his attitude of composure, he crossed his arms, and gazed on the ground. On the other side of the Colossus the grand pontiff likewise remained motionless, bowing his head, upon which was an Assyrian mitre, and observing on his breast the gold plaque covered with prophetic stones, which threw out iridescent lights as the flames struck across them. He grew pale and abstracted.

Hamilcar inclined his head, and they were both so near the pyre that the hem of their robes in rising from time to time swept it.

Moloch's brazen arms moved more rapidly; they no longer paused. Each time a child was placed upon them, the priests of Moloch extended their hands over the victim to charge upon it the sins of the people, vociferating:

"These are not men, but oxen!" and the multitude around repeated, "Oxen! Oxen!" The Devotees screamed out, "Lord! eat!" and the priests of Proserpine, conforming in terror to Carthage's need, mumbled their Eleusinian formula: "Pour forth rain! conceive!" No sooner were the victims placed on the verge of the aperture than they vanished, like a drop of water on a red-hot plate, and whiffs of white smoke curled up through the scarlet glow.

Yet the appetite of the god was not appeased; he still wanted more. In order to supply him, the children were piled on his hands, and were retained there by a great chain.

In the beginning, Devotees tried to count them, in order to note if the total number corresponded to the days of the solar year; but now so many were piled on that it was impossible to distinguish them during the dizzy movements of those horrible. arms. All this lasted a long time, until nightfall. Then the interior divisions gave a most sombre glare. For the first time, the burning flesh was visible. Some people even fancied that they recognized hair, limbs, and entire bodies.

The day fell; clouds gathered over the head of the Baal. The pyre, now flameless, made a pyramid of glowing embers that reached to his knees; and all crimson, like a giant covered with blood, with head bent backward, he seemed to reel under the weight of his intoxication. According as the priests urged haste, the frenzy of the people augmented; as the number of victims. decreased, some cried out to spare them, others that Moloch must have more. It seemed as though the walls, with their masses of spectators, would crumble beneath the yells of horror and of mystic voluptuousness. Then came into the alleys some faithful ones, dragging their children, who clung to them; and they beat the little hands to make them loose their hold, that they might deliver them to the red men.

Occasionally the musicians paused from sheer exhaustion; and in the lull could be heard the screams of mothers and the crackling of the grease spattering on the coals. The mandrake-drinkers crept on all-fours around the Colossus, roaring like tigers. The Yidonim prophesied; the Devotees chanted with their cleft lips. The railings were broken, for now all wanted to participate in the sacrifice; and fathers whose children were deceased cast into the yawning furnace their effigies, toys, and preserved bones. Those who possessed knives rushed upon the others; they cut each other's throats in their voracious rage, maddened by the holocaust. The sacred slaves, with bronze winnowing-baskets, took from the edge of the stone slab the fallen cinders, which they tossed high in the air, that the sacrifice should be dispersed over the entire city, and attain to the region of the stars.

The tumultuous noise and vast illumination had attracted the Barbarians to the very foot of the walls. Climbing upon the ruins of the helepolis, they looked on, gaping with horror.

5844

PAUL FLEMING

(1609-1640)

Ew names in that sterile period of German history which followed the century of the Reformation have won a lasting

place in literature. In Gryphius the most gifted dramatist, in Opitz the greatest literary influence, and in Fleming the most genuine lyric poet of his time, the spirit of German letters still flickered; and Fleming, though humbly subordinating himself to the domination of Opitz, was nevertheless the genius in whom the spirit shone brightest.

Paul Fleming was born on October 5th, 1609, and the years of his brief life were those of universal disaster, when Germany was made

PAUL FLEMING

the battle-ground of the contending nations. Fleming studied medicine in Leipsic, but meanwhile devoted himself so ardently to the development of his poetic gifts, that while still a student he received the Imperial crown of poetry. In 1630 he met Opitz, who, with a group of new German poets in his train, held the leadership of what is known to students as the First Silesian School. Fleming's reverence for this skillful but mechanical versifier was unbounded. It was not until three days before his early death that Fleming seemed to catch a glimpse of his own superiority; in the touching lines which he composed as his own epitaph, he wrote, "No countryman of mine sang like me;" and certain it is that in his work is displayed more spontaneity and greater depth of feeling than in that of the more famous leader. There is a strain of lofty pathos in Fleming's poetry that reminds of Schiller; and if it sometimes has a hollow sound, that lay in the character of the unreal time when the nations were fighting for moribund ideas, and when thought was sicklied o'er with the cast of pseudo-classical affectation. Brave men were exalted as gods and faithful officials as heroes, with the entire apparatus of mythological metaphor. And yet in Fleming's verse is revealed a deep and genuine piety, a broad humanity, and a healthy patriotism. His religious poems, through which he strove to keep his mind fixed

above the strife of parties and the demoralizing cruelty of that time. of incessant war, are still favorites in the German hymnals of to-day. His love lyrics and sonnets, not always free from the affectations of his school, are yet the expression of true feeling and delicate fancy. The destruction of Meissen and the death of Gustavus Adolphus were among the saddening experiences of Fleming's early life, but it was not to escape the disquieting events at home that sent him on distant travels: it was rather passion for travel and a love of the exotic. This passion found gratification in the appointment he received as a member of a Holstein embassy to Russia and Persia, in the service of which nearly six years of his life were passed. It was a life full of adventure by land and sea; there were bloody encounters in Persia, and twice the party suffered shipwreck. It was an experience that greatly widened the scope of his poetic material, as the Oriental coloring of the poems written during those six years shows.

Fleming's love life had its sorrows: the woman of his choice, during his long absence in the East, married another; he thereupon became engaged to a younger sister, who had in the mean time ripened into womanhood. They were to be married in Hamburg; but while he was awaiting her arrival, he fell sick and died, on April 2d, 1640, in his thirty-first year.

Fleming never won the high place in the estimation of the great contemporary public to which his genius entitled him; formalism prevailed, Opitz overshadowed him, the war crushed all but martial genius. Many of Fleming's poems have been lost, but enough remain to justify the claim that he was the one genuinely inspired lyric poet of the period of the Thirty Years' War.