birds, with the faces of strong boys, but no bodies at all that I could
see, who flew above them all. This was brave work, very wonderful to me in
a people who, thus excellently inspired and having such comely smiling
divinities and so clear a vision of them before their eyes, could yet be
curious after suffering heroes and stabbed virgins and gods with mangled
limbs. But we went into the temple with the good people of the country-
side to the sound of bells from a high tower hard by. And I was something
surprised that they brought no beasts with them for the sacrifice, nor any
of the fruits which were so abundant in the land; but my companion
reminded me again that the sacrifice was ready prepared within, and was,
as it were, emblematical of all fruits and every sort of meat, being that
wine and bread into which you may comprehend all bodily and (by a figure)
ghostly sustenance. By this we were within the temple, which I now
perceived was a pantheon, having altars to all the gods, some only of
whose shrines I had remarked on the way thither. Dark and lofty it was,
with piered arches that soared into the mist, and jewelled windows
painfully worked in histories and fables of old time:--all as far apart as
conceivably might be from the holy places of my own country; for whereas,
with us, the level gaze of the sun is never absent, and through the
colonnades you would see stretches of the far blue country, or, perchance,
the shimmer of the restless sea, here no light of day could penetrate, and
all the senses might apprehend must be of solemn darkness, longing
thoughts to cleave it, and, afar off and dim, some flutter of even light
as of blest abodes. A strange people! to despise the sure and fair, for
the taunting shadows of desire. But, growing more familiar in the middle
of newness and the awe that comes of it, I was again amazed at the number
of the gods, their nature and sort. I saw again the arrow-stricken youth,
whom we call Asclepius (but never knew thus tormented--as with his
father's arrows!) and again the Maid of the Wheel, Fortune as I suppose:
but with us the wheel is not so manifestly bitter. Then also the wounded