commemorated by gleams in that ritual, domineered over the popular
heart, even in those cases where the religion had been a derivative
religion, and not originally moulded by impulses breathing from
the native disposition. So that, upon the whole, such as were the
gods of a nation, such was the nation: given the particular idolatry,
it became possible to decipher the character of the idolaters. Where
Moloch was worshipped, the people would naturally be found cruel;
where the Paphian Venus, it could not be expected that they should
escape the taint of a voluptuous effeminacy.

Against this principle, there could have been no room for demur,
were it not through that inveterate prejudice besieging the modern
mind,--as though all religion, however false, implied some scheme
of morals connected with it. However imperfectly discharged,
one function even of the pagan priest (it is supposed) must have
been--to guide, to counsel, to exhort, as a teacher of morals. And,
had _that_ been so, the practical precepts, and the moral
commentary coming after even the grossest forms of worship, or
the most revolting mythological legends, might have operated to
neutralize their horrors, or even to allegorize them into better
meanings. Lord Bacon, as a trial of skill, has attempted something of
that sort in his 'Wisdom of the Ancients.' But all this is modern
refinement, either in the spirit of playful ingenuity or of ignorance.
I have said sufficiently that there was no _doctrinal_ part in
the religion of the pagans. There was a _cultus_, or ceremonial
worship: _that_ constituted the sum total of religion, in the
idea of a pagan. There was a necessity, for the sake of guarding
its traditional usages, and upholding and supporting its pomp, that
official persons should preside in this _cultus_: _that_
constituted the duty of the priest. Beyond this ritual of public