desire to visit new cities and look upon new works of strange
men, until at last he is swallowed up in the western sea. That
the unrivalled navigator of the celestial ocean should
disappear beneath the western waves is as intelligible as it
is that the horned Venus or Astarte should rise from the sea
in the far east. It is perhaps less obvious that winter should
be so frequently symbolized as a thorn or sharp instrument.
Achilleus dies by an arrow-wound in the heel; the thigh of
Adonis is pierced by the boar's tusk, while Odysseus escapes
with an ugly scar, which afterwards secures his recognition by
his old servant, the dawn-nymph Eurykleia; Sigurd is slain by
a thorn, and Balder by a sharp sprig of mistletoe; and in the
myth of the Sleeping Beauty, the earth-goddess sinks into her
long winter sleep when pricked by the point of the spindle. In
her cosmic palace, all is locked in icy repose, naught
thriving save the ivy which defies the cold, until the kiss of
the golden-haired sun-god reawakens life and activity.

The wintry sleep of nature is symbolized in innumerable
stories of spell-bound maidens and fair-featured youths,
saints, martyrs, and heroes. Sometimes it is the sun,
sometimes the earth, that is supposed to slumber. Among the
American Indians the sun-god Michabo is said to sleep through
the winter months; and at the time of the falling leaves, by
way of composing himself for his nap, he fills his great pipe
and divinely smokes; the blue clouds, gently floating over the
landscape, fill the air with the haze of Indian summer. In the
Greek myth the shepherd Endymion preserves his freshness in a
perennial slumber. The German Siegfried, pierced by the thorn
of winter, is sleeping until he shall be again called forth to