A. So much confused, that I have just head enough left to try, in a feeble manner, to get back to the country.
Q. And if you do get back to the country, when shall you again visit town?
A. Well, it is my impression, not just immediately!
SIDONIAN SHAKSPEARE.
In a deep and dark recess, among the sepulchral chambers of Sidon, on a splendid Sarcophagus in black stone, the delvers of the Palestine Exploration Committee lately discovered an ancient Phœnician inscription, which has been translated in a Beyrout newspaper as follows:—
"I, Talnite, Priest of Astarte, and King of Sidon, son of Eshmunazar, Priest of Astarte, and King of Sidon, lying in this tomb, say:—Come not to open my tomb; there is here neither gold, nor silver, nor treasure. He who will open this tomb shall have no prosperity under the sun, and shall not find repose in the grave."
If the explorers who unearthed Talnite's epitaph had been able to read it, they might have been fit to shake in their shoes; only that no Archæologist now makes any bones whatever of rifling an ancient tomb. Hereafter, perhaps, the Australian emissary of a British Exploration Fund will not be deterred by a commination similar to the foregoing from opening the tomb of Shakspeare, and perhaps removing both that Sarcophagus and its contents, should he find any remaining, to a Melbourne Museum.
The Other "G. O. M."—G. Osbourne Morgan. ("Mr. G." must copyright the initials.)