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ELEUSINIA.[a]

[Footnote a: See Number XXIII., September, 1859.]


THE SAVIOURS OF GREECE.

Life, in its central idea, is an entire and eternal solitude. Yet each
individual nature so repeats--and is itself repeated in--every other,
that there is insured the possibility both of a world-revelation in the
soul, and of a self-incarnation in the world; so that every man's life,
like Agrippa's mirror, reflects the universe, and the universe is made
the embodiment of his life,--is made to beat with a human pulse.

We do all, therefore,--Hindu, Egyptian, Greek, or Saxon,--claim kinship
both with the earth and the heavens: with the sense of sorrow we kneel
upon the earth, with the sense of hope we look into the heavens.

The two Presences of the Eleusinia,--the earthly Demeter,[b] the
embodiment of human sorrow, and the heavenly Dionysus,[c] the
incarnation of human hope,--these are the two Great Presences of the
Universe; about whom, as separate centres,--the one of measureless
wanderings, the other of triumphant rest,--we marshal, both in the
interpretations of Reason and in the constructions of our Imagination,
all that is visible or that is invisible,--whatsoever is palpable in