following, as it were, the spirit of the fallen hero to his distant
abode, where sit his old father, his spouse, and children,--thus
throwing across the cloud of battle a sweet gleam of domestic, pastoral
life, to relieve its gloom. Homer, both in the "Ilias" and "Odusseia,"
gives his readers frequent glimpses into the halls of Olympus; for
messengers are continually flashing to and fro, like meteors, between
the throne of Zeus and the earth. Sometimes it is Hermes sandalled with
down; sometimes it is wind-footed Iris, who is winged with the emerald
plumes of the rainbow; and sometimes it is Oneiros, or a Dream, that
glides down to earth, hooded and veiled, through the shadow of night,
bearing the behests of Jove. But however often we are permitted to
return to the ambrosial homestead of the ever-living gods in the wake
of returning messengers, we always find it the same calm region, lifted
far up above the turbulence, the perturbations, the clouds and storms
of

"That low spot which men call earth,"

--a glorious aërial Sans-Souci and house of pleasaunce.

It is curious that the atheistic Lucretius has given us a most glowing
description of the Olympian mansions; but perhaps the Olympus of the
Epicurean poet and philosopher is somewhat higher up and more
sublimated and etherealized than the Olympus of Homer and of the
popular faith. In a flash of poetic inspiration, he says, "The walls of
the universe are cloven. I see through the void inane. The splendor
(_numen_) of the gods appears, and the quiet seats which are not shaken
by storm-winds nor aspersed by rain-clouds; nor does the whitely
falling snow-flake, with its hoar rime, violate _their summery warmth_,
but an ever-cloudless ether laughs above them with widespread