same throughout the universe. The invisible governors of the
moral world were inevitably cast in a similar mould of fiction
and allegory. Every virtue, and even vice, acquired its divine
representative; every art and profession its patron, whose attributes,
in the most distant ages and countries, were uniformly derived from
the character of their peculiar votaries. A republic of gods of such
opposite tempers and interests required, in every system, the moderating
hand of a supreme magistrate, who, by the progress of knowledge and
flattery, was gradually invested with the sublime perfections of an
Eternal Parent, and an Omnipotent Monarch. [4] Such was the mild spirit
of antiquity, that the nations were less attentive to the difference,
than to the resemblance, of their religious worship. The Greek, the
Roman, and the Barbarian, as they met before their respective altars,
easily persuaded themselves, that under various names, and with various
ceremonies, they adored the same deities. [5] The elegant mythology of
Homer gave a beautiful, and almost a regular form, to the polytheism of
the ancient world.

[Footnote 3: There is not any writer who describes in so lively a manner
as Herodotus the true genius of polytheism. The best commentary may be
found in Mr. Hume's Natural History of Religion; and the best contrast
in Bossuet's Universal History. Some obscure traces of an intolerant
spirit appear in the conduct of the Egyptians, (see Juvenal, Sat. xv.;)
and the Christians, as well as Jews, who lived under the Roman empire,
formed a very important exception; so important indeed, that the
discussion will require a distinct chapter of this work. * Note: M.
Constant, in his very learned and eloquent work, "Sur la Religion," with
the two additional volumes, "Du Polytheisme Romain," has considered the
whole history of polytheism in a tone of philosophy, which, without
subscribing to all his opinions, we may be permitted to admire. "The
boasted tolerance of polytheism did not rest upon the respect due from
society to the freedom of individual opinion. The polytheistic nations,
tolerant as they were towards each other, as separate states, were not
the less ignorant of the eternal principle, the only basis of
enlightened toleration, that every one has a right to worship God in the
manner which seems to him the best. Citizens, on the contrary, were
bound to conform to the religion of the state; they had not the liberty
to adopt a fo