own literature, have become necessary to be somewhat known by all readers; nor can we understand sculpture and painting, unless we know how all these are illustrated by fictions of pagan antiquity. Too many of these fictions are unfit to meet the eye of innocence, but so far as any of them convey a moral, so far as they throw light upon the history of mankind, so far as they have been incorporated in our literature, either with the design of instruction or of ornament, they require to make a part of useful education. Not to make a compend of this character too minute to be interesting, and too meager to entertain, is the most I have attempted in these Elements of Mythology, except that I have constantly endeavoured to suggest a comparison between true and false religions, and to make children feel and be grateful that "the glorious gospel of the blessed God" is a dispensation of infinite wisdom and infinite mercy -that it is a marvellous light and a fountain of knowledge, as well as a guide to all virtue -that it dispels all phantoms from our life, and all darkness from our death—that it makes our worship a pure and simple service, our faith a clear conviction, and our devotion an undivided homage. I trust it is not a forced application to make a book of mythology one of a religious tendency. It is my own view of the subject, and I cannot but believe that the holiness and happiness of the Christian world will be rendered more evident by comparison with the times of that ignorance which God suffered long to exist-now happily succeeded and effaced by the certainty of revealed truth. By bringing fictions into contact with the facts of religion, I hope I shall in no case impair the sentiment of reverence, and that Christian piety will lose nothing by the assumption that natural religion was an elementary principle of human feelings and opinions, amidst the self-deceptions and gross abuses which grow up, like stifling weeds with it, in the divers faith and ordinances of paganism. To cherish the love of truth, to contribute to the formation of a just taste in literature, to employ the understanding principally in the acquirement of knowledge, to make reason the instructor of memory, and not memory the caterer of reason, is the purpose of all the little books I have written. To those who are employed in the education of the young, who think conscientiously and with interest upon the philosophy of instruction, and whose theory is the rule of their practice, I commend this book |