ize that we
stand every day like the patriarch of old in the very presence of God
himself.

The mythology of Greece and Rome furnishes to English literature
allusions so pointed, so vivid, and so full of beautiful suggestion that
a knowledge of the myths is necessary to any real culture. Modern
writers do not make such ready use of them as did the older schools, but
Lowell and Tennyson, Browning and Arnold, and a host of minor writers
assume that their readers know as their alphabet the stories of
mythology. In his hymn _On the Morning of Christ's Nativity_, Milton has
this stanza following one which tells that the shepherds heard the sweet
music:

"Nature that heard such sound
Beneath the hollow round
Of Cynthia's seat the airy region thrilling,
Now was almost won
To think her part was done,
And that her reign had here its last fulfilling;
She knew such harmony alone
Could hold all Heaven and Earth in happier Union."

How little of intelligent interest attaches to the first three lines if
one has no knowledge beyond the literal meaning of the phrases! "The
hollow round of Cynthia's seat" has beauty for that person only who
knows something of the Ptolemaic system of astronomy and of the
huntress-queen of Greek mythology.

Allusions lead one to every department of knowledge and are the result
of the early training and experience of the author. No one needs to be
told that Milton studied the classics, that Ruskin and Tennyson read the
bible devotedly, that Shakespeare passed his early life in the country.
The unconscious trend of their thought as shown by their allusions gives
that information most distinctly. If a man loves history in his youth
his writings will be filled with historical allusions; if he is a
devotee of science one will find the phenomena of nature the source of
his illustrations. The reader must be ready to understand and interpret
feelingly these allusions no matter what the particular bent of the
author. To the student the allusion is often very difficult of
comprehension, for if it comes in the way of an ingenious paraphrase he
may pass over it without the slightest recognition. When it is direct, a
dictionary or other reference book will frequently make it sufficiently
clear.

_Basis of Figures._ The allusion is but one of many ways in which an
author varies the literal meaning of his sentences and gives more force
and beauty to his statements. Ther