to the Muses, and learnt to cultivate the Arts, it is impossible to
say. As it is, its career was cut short in mid-course. It carried
about with it that melancholy presentiment of dissolution which has
come to be so characteristic of modern life, but of which scarce a
trace exists in ancient times, and this feeling would always have
made it different from that cheerful carelessness which so attracts
us in the Greeks; but even that downcast brooding heart was capable
of conceiving great and heroic thoughts, which it might have clothed
in noble shapes and forms, had not the axe of Providence cut down the
stately sapling in the North before it grew to be a tree, while it
spared the pines of Delphi and Dodona's sacred oaks, until they had
attained a green old age. And so this faith remained rude and rough;
but even rudeness has a simplicity of its own, and it is better to be
rough and true-hearted than polished and false. In all the feelings
of natural affection, that faith need fear no comparison with any
other upon earth. In these respects it is firm and steadfast as a
rock, and pure and bright as a living spring. The highest God is a
father, who protects his children; who gives them glory and victory
while they live, and when they die, takes them to himself; to those
fatherly abodes Death was a happy return, a glorious going home. By
the side of this great father stands a venerable goddess, dazzling
with beauty, the great mother of gods and men. Hand in hand this
divine pair traverse the land; he teaching the men the use of arms
and all the arts of war,--for war was then as now a noble calling,
and to handle arms an honourable, nay necessary, profession. To the
women she teaches domestic duties and the arts of peace; from her
they learn to weave, and sew, and spin; from her, too, the husbandman
learns to till his fields. From him springs poetry and song; from her
legend and tradition. Nor should it ever be forgotten that the
footsteps of Providence are always onward, even when they seem taken