principle of avowed spleen, is candid and has a self-knowledge in it. But to resent them as impertinent or effeminate, is at bottom to quarrel with the principle of one's own patience, and to set the fear of moving above the courage of it.

It has been well observed, that advice is not disliked because it is advice, but because so few people know how to give it. Yet there åre people vain enough to hate it in proportion to its very agreeableness.

By the same reason for which we call this earth a Vale of Tears, we might call heaven when we got there a Hill of Sighs; for upon the principle of an endless progression of beatitude, we might find a still better heaven promised us, and this would be enough to make us dise satisfied with the one in possession. Suppose that we have previously existed in the planet Mars; that there are no fields and trees there, and that we nevertheless could imagine them and were in the habit of anticipating their delight in the next world. Suppose that there was no such thing there as a stream of air, as a wind fanning one's face for a whole summer's day. What a romantic thing to fancy! What a beatitude to anticipate! Suppose above all that there was no such thing as love. Words would be lost in anticipating that. "Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard" &c. Yet when we got to this heaven of green fields and fresh airs, we might take little notice of either, for want of something more; and even love we might contrive to spoil pretty odiously.

AN Assyrian of the name of Rhæcus observing a fine old oak-tree ready to fall with age, ordered it to be sustained with props. He was continuing his way through the solitary skirts of the place, when a nymph of more than human look, appeared before him, with gladness in her eyes. "Rhocus," said she, "I am the Nymph of the tree which you have saved from perishing. My life is, of course, impli cated in its own. But for you, my existence must have terminated. But for you, the sap would have ceased to flow through its boughs, and the godlike essence I received from it to animate these veins. No more should I have felt the wind in my hair, the sun upon my cheeks, or the balmy rain upon my body. Now I shall feel them many years to come. Many years also will your fellow-creatures sit under my shade, and hear the benignity of my whispers, and repay me with their honey and their thanks. Ask what I can give you, Rhæcus, and you

shall have it."

* See the Scholiast upon Apollonius Rhodius, or the Mythology of Natalis Comes.

The king, his wife, and his daughters went out, trembling, though not so much as Triptolemus, nor with the same feeling. There was a great light in the air, which moved gradually towards them, and seemed to be struck upwards from something in the street. Presently, two gigantic torches appeared round the corner; and underneath them, sitting in a car, and looking earnestly about, sat a mighty female, of more than ordinary size and beauty. Her large black eyes, with their gigantic brows bent over them, and surmounted with a white forehead and a profusion of hair, looked here and there with an intentness and a depth of yearning, indescribable. "Chaire, Demeter!" exclaimed the king, in a loud voice:-" Hail, creative mother!" He raised the cry common at festivals, when they imagined a deity manifesting himself; and the priests poured out of their dwellings, with vestment and with incense, which they held tremblingly aloft, turning down their pale faces from the gaze of the passing goddess.

It was Ceres looking for her lost daughter Proserpina. The eye of the deity seemed to have a greater severity in its earnestness, as she passed by the priests; but at sight of a chorus of youths and damsels, who dared to lift up their eyes as well as voices, she gave such a beautiful smile as none but gods in sorrow can give; and emboldened with this, the king and his family prayed her to accept their hospitality.

She did so. A temple in the king's palace was her chamber, where she lay on the golden bed usually assigned to her image. The most precious fruits and perfumes burnt constantly at the door; and at first no hymns were sung but those of homage and condolence. But these the goddess commanded to be changed for happier songs; and word was also given to the city that it should remit its fears and its cares, and shew all the happiness of which it was capable before she arrived. "For," said she," the voice of happiness arising from earth is a god's best incense. A deity lives better on the pleasure of what it has created, than in a return of a part of its gifts."

Such were the maxims which Ceres delighted to utter during her abode at Eleusis, and which afterwards formed the essence of her renowned mysteries at that place. But the bigots, who afterwards adopted and injured them, heard them with dismay; for they were similar to what young Triptolemus had uttered, in the aspirations of his virtue. The rest of the inhabitants gave themselves up to the joy, from which the divinity would only extract consolation. They danced, they wedded, they loved; they praised her in hymns as chearful as her natural temper; they did great and glorious things for one another: never was Attica so full of true joy and heriosm: the young men sought every den and fearful place in the territory, to see if Proserpina was there; and the damsels vied who should give them most kisses for their reward. "Oh Dearest and Divinest Mother!" sang the Eleusinians, as they surrounded the king's palace at night with their evening hymn:-"O greatest and best goddess, who not above sorrow thyself, art yet above all wish to inflict it, we know by this that thou art indeed divine. Would that we might restore thee thy beloved daughter, thy daughter Proserpina, the dark, the beautiful, the

mother-loving; whom some god, less generous than thyself, would keep for his own jealous doating. Would we might see her in thine arms! We would willingly die for the sight; would willingly die with the only pleasure which thou hast left wanting to us.”

The goddess would weep at these twilight hymus, consoling herself for the absence of Proserpina by thinking how many daughters she had made happy. Triptolemus shed weaker tears at them in his secret bed, but they were happier ones than before. "I shall die," thought he, "merely from the bitter-sweet joy of seeing the growth of a happiness which I must never taste; but the days I longed for have arrived. Would that my father would only speak to the goddess, that my passage to the grave might be a little easier!"

66

The father doubted whether he should speak to the goddess. He loved his son warmly, though he did not well understand him; and the mother, in spite of all the goddess's kindness, was afraid lest in telling her of a child whom they were about to lose, they should remind her too forcibly of her own. Yet the mother, in an agony,of alarm one day, at a fainting fit of her son's, was the first to resolve to speak to her; and the king and she with pale and agitated faces, went and prostrated themselves at her feet. "What is this, kind hosts?" said Ceres, "have ye too lost a daughter ?" No; but we shall lose a son," answered the parents, "but for the help of heaven." "A son!" replied Ceres: "why did you not tell me your son was living? I had heard of him, and wished to see him; but never finding him among ye, I guessed that he was no more, and I would not trouble you with such a memory. But why did ye fear mine, when I could do good? Did your son fear it?"-"No indeed," said the parents; "he urged us to tell thee."-" He is the being I took him for," returned the goddess: "lead me to where he lies."

They came to his chamber, and found him kneeling up on the bed, his face and joined hands bending towards the door. He had felt the approach of the deity; and though he shook in every limb, it was a transport beyond fear that made him rise: it was love and gratitude. The goddess saw it; and bent on him a look that put composure in his shattered nerves. "What wantest thou," said she, "struggler with great thoughts?" "Nothing," answered Triptolemus, "if thou thinkest it good, but a shorter and easier death." "What? Before thy task is done?" "Fate," he replied, 66 seems to tell me that I was not fitted for my task, and it is more than done since thou art here. I pray thee, let me die; that I may not see every one around me weeping in the midst of joy at my disease, and yet not have strength enough left in my hands to wipe away their tears." 66 Not so, my child," said the goddess," and her grand harmonions voice had tears in it, as she spoke; "not so, Triptolemus; for my task is thy task; and even gods work with instruments. Thou hast not gone through all thy trials yet; but thou shalt have a better covering to bear them yet still by degrees. Gradual sorrow, gradual joy."

So saying, she put her hand to his heart, and pressed it; and the agitation of his spirit was further allayed, though he returned to his

reclining posture for weakness. From that time, the bed of Triptolemus was removed into the temple, and Ceres herself became his second mother. But nobody knew how she nourished hinr. It was said, that she summoned milk into her bosom, and nourished him at her immortal heart, as though he had been newly born in heaven. But he did not grow taller in stature, as men expected. His health was restored; his joints were knit again, and stronger than ever; but he continued the same small, though graceful youth; only the sicklier particles which he had received from his parents withdrew their wasting influence.

At last however, his very figure began to grow and expand. Up to this moment, he had only been an interesting mortal, in whom the stoutest and best-made of his father's subjects recognized something mentally superior. Now, he began to look in person as well as in mind a demigod. The curiosity of the parents was roused at this appearance; and it was heightened by the report of a domestic, who said that in passing the door of the temple one night, she heard a sound as of a mighty fire. But their parental feelings were also excited by the behaviour of Triptolemus, who, while he seemed to rise with double cheerfulness in the morning, always began to look melancholy towards nightfall. For some hours before he retired to rest, he grew silent, and looked more and more thoughtful; though nothing could be kinder in his manners to every body, and the hour no sooner approached for his retiring, than he went instantly and even chearfully.

His parents resolved to watch. They knew not what they were about, or they would have abstained: for Ceres was every night at her enchantments to render their son immortal in being as well as fame; and interruption would be fatal. At midnight, they listened at the temple-door.

66

The first thing they heard was the roaring noise of fire, as had been reported. It was deep and fierce. They were about to retire for fear; but curiosity and parental feeling prevailed. They listened again; but for some time heard nothing but the fire. At last, a voice, resembling their child's, gave a deep groan. "It was a strong trial, my son," said another, in which they recognized the melancholy sweetness of the goddess. The grandeur and exceeding novelty of these visions," said the fainter voice, press upon me, as though they would bear down my brain." "But they do not," returned the deity," and they have not. I will summon the next." "Nay, not yet," rejoined the mortal; 66 yet be it as thou wilt. I know what thou tellest me, great and kind mother."-" Thou dost know," said the goddess, and thou knowest in the very heart of thy knowledge, which is in the sympathy of it and the love. Thou seest that difference is not difference, and yet is so; that the same is not the same, and yet must be ; that what is, is but what we see, and as we see it; and yet that which we see, is. Thou shalt prove it finally; and this is the last trial but one. Vision, come forth." A noise here took place, as of the entrance of something exceeding hurried and agonized, but which

66

"Only to

remained fixed with equal stillness. A brief pause took place, at the end of which the listeners heard their son speak, but in a voice of exceeding toil and loathing, and as if he turned away his head :-" It is," said he, gasping for breath, "utmost deformity." thine habitual eyes, and when alone," said the goddess, in a soothing and earnest manner:-"look again!" "Oh my heart!" said the same voice, gasping as if with transport, "they are perfect beauty and humanity." They are only two of the same," said the goddess, "each going out of itself. Deformity to the eyes of habit is nothing but analysis; in essence it is nothing but one-ness, if such a thing there be. The touch and the result is every thing. See what a goddess knows, and see nevertheless what she feels:in this only greater then mortals, that she lives for ever to do good. Now comes the last and greatest trial: now shalt thou see the real worlds as they are; now shalt thou behold them lapsing in reflected splendour about the blackness of space; now shalt thou dip thine ears into the mighty ocean of their harmonies, and be able to be touched with the concentrated love of the universe. Roar heavier, fire; endure, endure, thou immortalizing frame." 66 Yes, now, now," said the other voice, in a superhumam tone, which the listeners knew not whether to think joy or anguish; but their minds were so much more full of the latter, that they opened a place from which the priestess used to speak at the lintel, and looked in. The mother beheld her son, stretched, with a face of bright agony, upon burning coals. She shrieked; and pitch darkness fell upon the temple, and all about it. "A little while," said the mournful voice of the goddess and heaven had had another life. Oh Fear! what does thou not do! Oh may all but divine boy," continued she, now plunged again into physical darkness, thou canst not do good so long as thou wouldst have done, but thou shalt have a life almost as long as the commonest sons of men, and a thousand times more useful and glorious. Thou must change away the rest of thy particles, as others do; and in the process of time, they may meet again under some nature worthy of thee, and give thee another chance for yearning into immortality; but at present, the pain is done; the pleasure must not arrive."

66

The fright they had undergone, slew the weak parents. Triptolemus, strong in body, chea:ful to all in show, chearful to himself in many things, retained nevertheless a certain melancholy from his recollections; but it did not hinder him from sowing joy wherever he went. It incited him but the more to do so. The success of others stood him instead of his own. Ceres gave him the first seeds of the corn that makes bread, and sent him in her chariot round the world to teach men how to use it. "I am not immortal myself," said he, "but let the good I do be so, and I shall yet die happy."

1