and had the look of habitancy about it; but I saw no folk. Only at
rare moments of time while I hovered afar off looking at the wonder
and radiance of it, the Gods appeared above the battlements in a
shining row--still and awful, each of them ten feet high.

These were fine dreams for a boy of sixteen in a schoolhouse
dormitory. They were mine, though: but I dreamed them awake. I awoke
before they began, always, and used to sit up trembling and wait for
them.

An apologue, if you please. On the sacred road from Athens to Eleusis,
about midway of its course, and just beyond the pass, there is a fork
in it, and a stony path branches off and leads up into the hills.
There, in the rock, is a shallow cave, and before that, where once was
an altar of Aphrodite, the ruins of her shrine and precinct may be
seen. As I was going to Eleusis the other day, I stopped the carriage
to visit the place. Now, beside the cave is a niche, cut square in the
face of the rock, for offerings; and in that niche I found a fresh
bunch of field flowers, put there by I know not what dusty-foot
wayfarer. That was no longer ago than last May, and the man who did
the piety was a Christian, I suppose. So do I avow myself, without
derogation, I hope, to the profession; for no more than Mr. Robert
Kirk, a minister of religion in Scotland in the seventeenth century,
do I consider that a knowledge of the Gods is incompatible with belief
in God. There is a fine distinction for you: I believe that God
exists; I infer him by reason stimulated by desire. But I know that
the Gods exist by other means than those. If I could be as sure of God
as I am of the Gods, I might perhaps be a better Christian, but I
should not believe any less in the Gods.