as an instance, the Egyptian and the Grecian. Their sculptures stand side by side in our galleries, and their religions rank near together in our learnings. And yet how different they were!— and how truly each expressed the forming idea which had moulded it! The Egyptian cared little for the phenomena of physical nature, embodying, in his own way, the spiritual, the metaphysical, and esoteric alone. The Hellene seized on all that the outward had to offer; making this the type of the supersensual, in contradistinction to that creed which held spirit as wholly apart from sense, and looked on images only as media of communication, no matter what their unlikeness or unfitness. His religion was essentially human; spiritual only so far as manhood can be idealised, but not spiritual, as freed from any necessity of connexion with sense. The Egyptian united the two-matter and spirit; but in a clumsy, unharmonious fashion. His figures were mere letters, not types-an alphabet by which to read, not a mirror wherein to study. The Greek, on the contrary, gave the greater worth and weight to form and sense; and so has made himself the companion of all generations, while man shall be, as now, subjected more to sensation than to thought.

These words might startle many-" subjected more to sensation than to thought" and many there are who would start up indignantly to deny them, and to assert the supreme dominion of the mind-the ideal. Ah, well! they are ghastly wordsbut they are true; true, in spite of that pretty, but untenable philosophy, by which every man who has his share of intellect, disdains to be other than spiritual, æsthetic, beyond and above the influence of coarse rude sense-a being of all angelic attributes, but no man of blood, and nerves, and appetites! Folly of all follies!—as if sensation were a crime!—affections a degradation!— as if to love, were to be wanting in dignity of manhood!-as if to feel, were to be wanting in the intention of life! It is the fashion of the day; and the ban on the opposer of this fashion is the dreaded cry-Materialism. It will pass, as the fashion of burning witches in the market-place; as all fashions which have not nature and common sense for their bases, must inevitably pass away into nothingness!

The Greek showed his intimate knowledge of human nature in nothing more clearly than in the characters of his Gods. In Egypt, India, China-wherever there is a sensuous polytheism— though we find different and appropriate attributes, we do not find

such varied and entire human characters as in Greece. More or less, the impersonations of other mythologies are unnatural; in this, they are the very perfections of humanity-the men and women met with in daily life, but refined into an ideal beauty, to which simple manhood cannot attain. A few exceptions of the early theogonies, or of the mystic adaptations brought from the East, war against the more cultivated taste of the age; but they are only a few. Thus, the Ephesian Artemis was never of the same thought as that which created the Athene of the Parthenon, and the sedent Olympian Zeus at Elis. But the Grecian mythology seldom admitted anything foreign to the laws of beauty; for their whole divinity was nought but manhood beautified and idealised, till by this very excess of loveliness, it became godlike.

How true to human nature, in particulars, not only in generals, were those Gods of Greece-let their characters themselves declare ! We have met them face to face many a time and oft. History speaks of them, and poetry reproduces them, not as Gods, but as loving and as suffering men. Our Calendar of Saints holds many a copy of those Olympian antitypes; our Chronicles of Chivalry repeat their stories; and the heroes of old-the demigods who stood betwixt men and the Gods-may be seen again in the tourney, the battle-field, the war-ship, in the past and in the present of modern history! While the feats of Abd-el-Kader, and the name of the Rajah of Sarawak, are known to us as truths, let us not reject the heroic mythes of Greece, nor the names of her godlike men!

As one instance, among many, of the intimate likeness between the Gods and the worshippers of Hellas-in their mutual keen sensations, high beauty, and ardent natures-we will take Hera, or, as we, in our barbarous habit of latinising the Grecian names, would call her, Juno. Trace her nature throughout, and look upon her form, as Polycleitos gave it to Mycenæ, and surely we shall find that many a dame, actual now and living, might wear the portrait of the sister spouse of Zeus! Look upon that broad majestic brow, which shows so well beneath the glossy tresses, plainly gathered round, to fall upon her marble shoulders in loose masses of waving curl; and there, through all its dignity and awful majesty, we see the imperious woman to the full as plainly as the unapproachable Goddess! A stephanos, or tiara-shaped crown binds the snowy veil upon her head, which descends in a graceful majesty of fold and disposition to encompass her pillar

like throat, and to shade her proud and faultless breast. Her arms, firm, rounded, and uncovered, are adorned with bands of gold; and her drapery, the long Ionic chiton or under-dressthe diploidion or boddice, both of which are confined by a girdle concealed in the overhanging plaits-and the peplos, or shawl, flow round her in those broad deep folds which suit her dignity so well; folds which no art could arrange upon the person of a fair petite and piquant blonde. See her haughty indignation, as she meets her faithless spouse, when he returns with his serene hypocrisy from some of his stolen loves-it has nothing vulgar, nothing coarse; but how terrible it is, in the intensity of its proud and withering wrath! Hear her voice, not shrill or shrewish, but like the deep murmurs of the winds before the coming storm, telling of such stern and ruthless anger; and she, the while, so dignified in her resentment, never forgetting the superiority which her knowledge of her husband's failings has given her-never descending from the position of insulted pride to the gentler place of forgiveness, love, and mercy! Well may Zeus tremble before her, guilty as he is !-well may he purchase peace at almost any sacrifice, so that he hears no more of that dread and well-deserved rebuke-which stands him instead of the mortal's morning headache-his concessions, the hock and soda-water that shall cure him!

A fine, regal, voluptuous woman, was this Samian queen! grandly beautiful, with her large ox-eyes, white arms, and glorious form! -a woman to be loved with a slight alloy of fear, and no little respect and obedience. And have there not been English Heras, even in this work-day life of ours ?-though, let us whisper by way of parenthesis, that they do not add much to the comfort or the heart's happiness of the workers! Are they not still living, amongst our very acquaintances and friends, to make up the chain of harmony in womankind, of which Hebe, Aphrodite, Demeter, Athene, and Artemis, all form deep, distinct, and glorious links? They are the women who dress in black velvet and gold ornaments-whose voices are calm with a terrible calmness, and have but little intonation, though they are so musical and soft; proud and serene are they, with long white hands, whose fingers taper gently to the points, and whose muscles are firm and strong, yet not prominent-women who walk with a stately step, not treading high, nor yet gliding like summer wavelets to the beach, but slow and smooth, with an undefinable

air of superiority, as if earth were too gross a footstool for their proud and haughty place; their eyes move calmly, and seem to take in all objects with a certain serene contempt, an indifference that results from high consciousness of superiority; fixed and steady is their gaze, not startled, not responsive, not loving, not admiring and yet full of deep expression; but it is an expression that arises from the excess of that still, proud life within, not from any sympathy excited by that which is without. These are women met with in life-though not frequently; for it is rare to find any character with one extreme development, created by an inward power, and not by exterior circumstances. These women become the queen-oracles of their society; and at their ban the men tremble, and the maidens are annihilated; their reception stamps as current, or their rejection brands as illegal, each smooth unvalued coin presented; and few there are in the coteries, over which such modern Heras hold supreme sway, who would dare to dispute their word. They rarely meet with their equals rarely marry their superiors. And this is not strange. One of two must ever be the strongest; and where the strength results from extreme pride and unyielding will, it is not to be conquered even by a mightier intellect, if of less energy of determination. Thus, we see the struggle between Zeus and his regal spouse frequent, and often undecided. Jove, with all his power and majesty, had a "soft part" in his heart, which could not withstand a woman's influence. And be it sweet Semele, or nymph, or mortal maid, or be it his virgin daughter, or his imperious wife, he is equally open to their seductions, and equally subservient to their wishes.

Hera, though essentially a gentlewoman, was one of an early time, while simplicity was still barbarous, and before an aftercivilisation had refined the rudeness of the heroic age; much therefore that she does, is scarce in harmony with the luxurious elegance of later Ionian manners. And would not we stare at the gentility of a Maid of Honour, even so late as Queen Elizabeth's day? Why a very servant girl-not to speak of a Swiss bonne, or a Parisian femme-de-chambre-would toss her head, right saucily, at the manners of the best-bred woman about the court! She would stand aghast at the beef-steaks and ale, wherewith the daintiest coquette among them all braced up her strength for further conquest; and offering her some bitter tea, and most unwholesome cakes, swimming in salt butter-mayhap not too fresh

---she would beseech her uncouth ladyship to try for once what gentility was made of! Few can distinguish refinement from the conventional etiquette of the present society-whatever it may be. So few know where art, and where nature should step in-nor how far conventionalities stand in the room of the real and the actual. A breach of etiquette is always more severely visited than an offence against morals; and the man who should appear without gloves, and in a frock-coat, in a ball-room, would be scouted from society sooner than one who eloped with his friend's wife, or cheated his friend's son at a gaming house! This, too, will be different!

Much in the Homeric poems, which are our truest index to the humanities of the Gods, seems to us rude and uncouth; and many of the mythes are such as men, only in their earliest mental childhood, would have dared to have framed. What a sad blur on the picture of our stately velvet-clad dame, that threat of her lordly master, when he talked of punishment and stripes, and reminded her of the day when she was suspended between earth and sky, with golden anvils round her beauteous feet! That is a glorious touch-that golden anvil!-true, too, for the age, in its mixture of barbarity and luxury, like the Eastern courts of the present day. But we will not think of this! Turn we to her festivals to the tepos yapos-the sacred marriage between herself and Zeus, which gave its name to the month Gamelion, and set the fashion of the Grecian January marriages; to the Herea of Argos, where games and sacrifices-the "bed of twigs,"-took place near her flowery temple-where the priestess of her shrine rode in a splendid car, drawn by two milk-white oxen-where the prize, to that brave youth who could unfix the brazen shield, suspended so high upon her temple walls, was the simple myrtle garland ;to the Samian Festival, or Heræa, to which beautiful youths, and glorious maids, with floating hair and magnificent apparel, flocked from all parts of Greece to witness the maiden race, where, clothed only in the short chiton which came but to the knee-their long hair loose, and waving in the wind-the sweet victors received their prize, the olive chaplet ;-turn we to the legend of that Nauplian bath, the fresh fount Canachos, wherein she bathed each year, and rose from its waves-not the mother of Ares or of Hebe, but an unsullied virgin, whose first young bashful kiss had been nor sued nor won ;-turn we to all these rather than to other less endearing memories, until we learn to love the regal dame, as though we ourselves had been brought up upon her knee, her children and her darlings.