ask themselves how it was possible that they should ever have allowed themselves to be fooled by such hallucinations. There is one point of view from which Mr. Cox looks on the Greek mythology that has not yet been mentioned. He feels himself thrilled with a moral horror at the idea of cultivated people like the Greeks having ever been in such a low moral state as to imagine such monstrous tales of adultery, incest, and murder, as true histories about their gods and heroes. These monstrous tales are therefore in all cases to be received as misunderstood theological myths. Now there can be no doubt that the amours of Zeus, for instance, are not to be taken literally as gratifications of mere sensual passion. They represent unquestionably some physical interaction (like the sacred marriage of Heaven and Earth in Iliad, XIV.); or we may say that a sort of general fatherhood of Jove and a polygamic connection with mortal women was necessary to fill the earth with heroes and demigods. "Sunt superis sua jura!" Polygamy in the great Father of the Universe may be a benignant semination of divine gifts and graces, which in the head of a human family could lead only to confusion and the vague concubinage of savage life. So far well. But when it is argued further that because the old family history of the Labdacidan and Pelopidan kings, as represented in the Greek drama, contains monstrosities and atrocities which could not possibly have existed in connection with any real human characters among such a people as the Greeks, it is forgotten not only that the history of great despotic and dynastic houses has seldom been free from the taint of great crimes as the story of the decadent Roman autocracy, of the Byzantine Empire, of the Popes of the fifteenth century, not to mention the kings of Judah, including the well-known King David himself but it is kept out of view also that when horrid crimes are committed, the popular imagination experiences a morbid delight in exaggerating their horrors; and, to bring the thing to a climax, if a generation of tragic poets or sensation novel writers are at hand, there is no limit to the intensity of sanguineous and pitchy hues with which such real occurrences may be painted out in the popular imagination. Not therefore because a Theban dynast in the local tradition is said to have committed incest unknowingly with his mother, nor because a famous Attic prince is believed to have carried off Spartan Helen, and even to have descended into Hades, does there arise the slightest presumption that the original type of these traditional heroes was a Sanscrit sun-god. If marvellous lies are told of modern Englishmen, why not of ancient Greeks? VIII. It remains only that the principles laid down in the above propositions should be tested by their application to some of the leading and best-known figures in the Greek Pantheon. A few sentences will be sufficient for this, as ample indication has been given already of the method of determining the signification of some of the principal personages. Let us select from the mass Zeus, Poseidon, Apollo, Artemis, Hera, Athena, Hermes, Dionysus, Aphrodite, Escu lapius, Hercules, Bellerophon, Achilles, Theseus. Zeus and Poseidon explain themselves obviously enough, the one as the dark-thundering electric energy of the sky; the other as the broad-breasted, widegirdling, strong-scourging energy of the sea. The omnipotent ruler of the sky represents also the wisdom that rules in the macrocosm of the great universe, as in the microcosm of the soul of man. Jove in fact, as Supreme Power and Providence, is to the universe exactly what Authority and Polity and Law are to human societies. Apollo, as the Sun, requires no commentary, as little his sister Artemis as the Moon. Wild beasts and hunters go forth in the night to seek for their prey, or snare their game, beneath the glimpses of the moon ; Diana, therefore, is the protector of the one and the patron of the other. The night season also is favourable to necromancy and incantation, therefore Hecate (Exáry-the moon that sends her rays from far) presides over witchcraft and necromancy, and becomes at last in her latest modern disguise, a witch herself, and the president of all unholy convocations of extravagant spirits and ill-favoured hags that delight in mischief. Hera, as the wife of Zeus, who is the anthropomorphic Heavens, is the anthropomorphic Earth; a great elemental power, represented also in its productive capacity by Ceres, and by the great Diana of the Ephesians, and the Cybele or mighty mother of the Phrygians. Athena is merely the womanly aspect of Jove, therefore the only-begotten daughter of the Thunderer, the inheritor of his wisdom, the representative of his power, and the only goddess who may at times, without offence, wield his deathful thunderbolt. In accordance with this obvious view of her connection with the dark-clouded lord of the upper regions, the epithet of "flashing-eyed" (yλavnŵπis), so familiar to us from Homer, must have signified originally the brightness of the clear blue sky that peeps out between the rents of the thunder-cloud, or possibly also the vivid flash of the lightning. This, if I remember rightly, is Welcker's view of the nature of this goddess. The original nature of Hermes is clearly revealed by the phallic symbol which he shows (Herod., II. 51), and the fact that in Homer he appears as a pastoral god of increase (II., XIV. 491), from which origin, when the day of merchants arrived, he became a god of gain generally, and even a patron of thieves. His other functions and attributes can readily be traced back either to the arts of early shepherd life, of which he was the patron, or to the dexterities which belong to mercantile negotiation. Max Müller's attempted reduction of this god to the breeze which accompanies the dawn, shows to what shifts a man of genius may be driven, when he allows himself to revel freely in the intoxicating element of a favourite idea. As for Dionysus, that he is fundamentally the same as Hermes the phallic symbol and potent viny fervour sufficiently indicate; the legends about him likewise point plainly to a migration of his worship from the orgiastic East to the more decent and sober West. In regard to Aphrodite, her Phoenician origin is universally acknowledged; she follows the Phoenician trading stations from isle to isle, and may be acknowledged in Corinth and the Piræus, not, however, necessarily without the admixture of some original incarnation of sensual love with which she may have coalesced. Esculapius is an undoubted example of the partial truth of the doctrine of Euhemerus. In Homer he is plainly a mortal physician, a native of Thessaly, the mother-country of medicine and witchcraft to the Greeks. Hercules also in Homer has the aspect of a simple Hellenic Samson, a man of marvellous bodily strength, very natural to come to light in those wild times-a man by whom, no doubt, many very wonderful feats were achieved, and about whom many more wonderful were believed. The Hercules, however, of the full-blown Hellenic mythology is evidently a much more complex person-an agglomerate, perhaps, of many persons-a mixture certainly of a Theban or Argive Samson with the well-known Melcarth, the sun-god of the seafaring merchants of ancient Tyre, and more ancient Sidon. In this view, that the twelve labours of the son of Semele are the twelve months of the year, and the twelve signs of the Zodiac, is in the highest degree probable. As for Bellerophon, Achilles, and Theseus, enough has been said above to indicate that not the slightest reason exists why we should believe that the first was other than a Corinthian prince, as he appears to be; or why the second should be either a sun-god or a water-god (the favourite German idea before Max Müller), rather than a simple Thessalian thane, like the Douglas or Percy in our Border history; or why, again, the third should not have been as real in ancient Attica as Robert Bruce was in modern Scotland, or Charlemagne in the tradition of the Frankish kings. If Ariosto delighted to revel in beautiful nonsense, this is no reason why we should believe that the popular imagination of medieval Europe should have delighted to disport itself in a limbo of utter vacuity, and created a great European emperor out of nothing. The present remarks are not intended to treat with any studied disrespect either the science of comparative mythology generally, or the special interpretations of certain individual Greek myths, for which we are indebted to the learning, genius, and eloquence of Professor Max Müller. My protest is intended only against the sweeping and indiscriminate fashion in which he and his followers, neglecting near and native sources, violently, as it appears to me, force Oriental ideas upon the whole body of an important class of myths which grew and flourished on European ground. I object also to the attempt to give a scientific interpretation of all myths. "Haud scire fas est omnia." Some mythological fables were in their origin too trifling to deserve interpretation; others are certainly too tangled to admit of it and in this region, as in the more important domain of metaphysics and theology, the wisdom of Socrates and the maxim of Sir William Hamilton will often be applicable: "A contented ignorance is better than a presumptuous knowledge." [J. S. B.] ANNUAL MEETING, Monday, May 2, 1870. SIR HENRY HOLLAND, Bart. M.D. D.C.L. F.R.S. President, The Annual Report of the Committee of Visitors for the year 1869 was read and adopted. The Books and Pamphlets presented in 1869 amounted to 255 volumes, making, with those purchased by the Managers, a total of 388 volumes added to the Library in the year, exclusive of periodicals. Forty-seven new Members were elected in 1869. Sixty-three Lectures and Nineteen Evening Discourses were delivered during the year 1869. Thanks were voted to the President, Treasurer, and Secretary, to the Committees of Managers and Visitors, and to the Professors, for their services to the Institution during the past year. The following Gentlemen were unanimously elected as Officers for the ensuing year : PRESIDENT Sir Henry Holland, Bart. M.D. D.C.L. F.R.S. MANAGERS. John J. Bigsby, M.D. F.R.S. F.G.S. John Hall Gladstone, Esq. Ph.D. F.R.S. Sir Roderick I. Murchison, Bart. K.C.B. William Pole, Esq. M.A. F.R.S. Lieut.-Gen. Sir Edward Sabine, R.A. K.C.B. The Marquis of Salisbury. Sir Charles Wheatstone, D.C.L. F.R.S. VISITORS. William Ernst Browning, Esq. Thomas Williams Helps, Esq. M.A. Alfred Latham, Esq. Thomas Lee, Esq. William Martin, Esq. Edward Henry Moscrop, Esq. The Lord Josceline W. Percy. WEEKLY EVENING MEETING, Friday, May 6, 1870. SIR HENRY HOLLAND, Bart. M.D. D.C.L. F.R.S. President, RICHARD A. PROCTOR, B.A. F.R.A.S. On Star-grouping, Star-drift, and Star-mist. NEARLY a century has passed since the greatest astronomer the world has ever known,-the Newton of observational astronomy, as he has justly been called by Arago,-conceived the daring thought that he would gauge the celestial depths. And because in his day, as indeed in our own, very little was certainly known respecting the distribution of the stars, he was forced to found his researches upon a guess. He supposed that the stars, not only those visible to the naked eye, but all that are seen in the most powerful telescopes, are suns, distributed with a certain general uniformity throughout space. It is my purpose to attempt to prove that- -as Sir Wm. Herschel was himself led to suspect during the progress of his researches-this guess was a mistaken one; that but a small proportion of the stars can be regarded as real suns; and that in place of the uniformity of distribution conceived by Sir Wm. Herschel, the chief characteristic of the sidereal system is infinite variety. In order that the arguments on which these views are based may be clearly apprehended, it will be necessary to recall the main results of Sir Wm. Herschel's system of star-grouping. Directing one of his 20-feet reflectors to different parts of the heavens, he counted the stars seen in the field of view. Assuming that the telescope really reached the limits of the sidereal system, it is clear that the number of stars seen in any direction affords a means of estimating the relative extension of the system in that direction, provided always that the stars are really distributed throughout the system with a certain approach to uniformity. Where many stars are seen, there the system has its greatest extension; where few, there the limits of the system must be nearest to us. Sir Wm. Herschel was led by this process of star-grouping to the conclusion that the sidereal system has the figure of a cloven disc. The stars visible to the naked eye lie far within the limits of this disc. Stars outside the relatively narrow limits of the sphere including all the visible stars, are separately invisible; but where the system has its |