hat they were so disheartened as almost to send in their resignation;
that Christianity had only to blow upon these empty shades?

They point to the gods in Rome; they point out those in the Capitol,
admitted there only by a kind of preliminary death, on the surrender,
I might say, of all their local pith; as having disowned their
country, as having ceased to be the representative spirits of the
nations. In order to receive them, indeed, Rome had performed on them
a cruel operation: they were enervated, bleached. Those great
centralized deities became in their official life the mournful
functionaries of the Roman Empire. But the decline of that Olympian
aristocracy had in no wise drawn down the host of home-born gods, the
mob of deities still keeping hold of the boundless country-sides, of
the woods, the hills, the fountains; still intimately blended with the
life of the country. These gods abiding in the heart of oaks, in
waters deep and rushing, could not be driven therefrom.

Who says so? The Church. She rudely gainsays her own words. Having
proclaimed their death, she is indignant because they live. Time after
time, by the threatening voice of her councils[5] she gives them
notice of their death--and lo! they are living still.

[5] See Mansi, Baluze; Council of Arles, 442; of Tours, 567;
of Leptines, 743; the Capitularies, &c., and even Gerson,
about 1400.

"They are devils."--Then they must be alive. Failing to make an end of
them, men suffer the simple folk to clothe, to disguise them. By the
help of legends they come to be baptized, even to be foisted upon the
Church. But at least they are converted? Not yet. We catch them
stealthily subsisting in their own heathen character.

Where are they? In the desert, on the moor, in the forest? Ay; but,
above all, in the house. They are kept up by the most intimate
household usages. The wife guards and hides them in her household
things, even in her bed. With her they have the best place in the
world, better than the temple,--the fireside.

* * * * *

Never was revolution so violent as that of Theodosius. Antiquity shows
no trace of such proscription of any worship. The Persian
fire-worshipper might, in the purity of his heroism, have insulted the
visible deities, but he let them stand nevertheless. He greatly
favoured the Jews, protecting and employing them. Greece, daughter of
the light, made merry with the gods of darkn