Ancients," has not interpreted. This is the flaying of Marsyas by
Apollo. Everybody remembers the accepted version of it, namely,--that
the young shepherd found Minerva's flute, and was rash enough to enter
into a musical contest with the God of Music. He was vanquished, of
course,--and the story is, that the victor fastened him to a tree and
flayed him alive.

But the God of Song was also the God of Light, and a moment's reflection
reveals the true significance of this seemingly barbarous story. Apollo
was pleased with his young rival, fixed him in position against an iron
rest, (the _tree_ of the fable,) and took a _photograph_, a sun-picture,
of him. This thin film or _skin_ of light and shade was absurdly
interpreted as being the _cutis_, or untanned leather integument of the
young shepherd. The human discovery of the art of photography enables us
to rectify the error and restore that important article of clothing to
the youth, as well as to vindicate the character of Apollo. There is
one spot less upon the sun since the theft from heaven of Prometheus
Daguerre and his fellow-adventurers has enabled us to understand the
ancient legend.

We are now flaying our friends and submitting to be flayed ourselves,
every few years or months or days, by the aid of the trenchant sunbeam
which performed the process for Marsyas. All the world has to submit to
it,--kings and queens with the rest. The monuments of Art and the face
of Nature herself are treated in the same way. We lift an impalpable
scale from the surface of the Pyramids. We slip off from the dome of St.
Peter's that other imponderable dome which fitted it so closely that it
betrays every scratch on the original. We skim off a thin, dry cuticle
from the rapids of Niagara, and lay it on our unmoistened paper without
breaking a bubble or losing a speck of foam. We steal a landscape from