Each of these are descended from, or changed from, more ancient, and
therefore more mystic, deities of the earth and heaven, and of a finer
element of æther supposed to be beyond the heavens;* but at this time
we find the four quite definite, both in their kingdoms and in their
personalities. They are the rulers of the earth that we tread upon, and
the air that we breathe; and are with us closely, in their vivid
humanity, as the dust that they animate, and the winds that they bridle.
I shall briefly define for you the range of their separate dominions, and
then follow, as far as we have time, the most interesting of the legends
which relate to the queen of the air.


* And by modern science now also asserted, and with probability argued,
to exist.


11. The rule of the first spirit, Demeter, the earth mother, is over the
earth, first, as the origin of all life,--the dust from whence we were
taken; secondly, as the receiver of all things back at last into silence
--"Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return." And, therefore, as
the most tender image of this appearing and fading life, in the birth and
fall of flowers, her daughter Proserpine plays in the fields of Sicily,
and thence is torn away into darkness, and becomes the Queen of Fate--not
merely of death, but of the gloom which closes over and ends, not beauty
only, but sin, and chiefly of sins the sin against the life she gave; so
that she is, in her highest power, Persephone, the avenger and purifier
of blood--"The voice of thy brother's blood cries to me out of the
ground." Then, side by side with this queen of the earth, we find a
demigod of agriculture by the plough--the lord of grain, or of the thing
ground by the mill. And it is a singular proof of the simplicity of