ther, as it did, all the prominent
elements of mythology, furnishes, in its dramatic evolution through
Demeter and Dionysus, the highest and most complete representation of
ancient faith in both of its developments. In a former paper, we have
endeavored to give this drama its deepest interpretation by pointing to
the human heart as the central source of all its movements. We shall now
ask our readers to follow us out into these movements themselves,--that,
as before we saw how the world is centred in each human soul, we may now
see how each soul develops itself in the world; for thither it is that
the ever-widening cycles of the Eleusinian epos will inevitably lead us.

And first as an epos of sorrow: though centring in the earthly Demeter,
yet its movement does not limit itself by the remembrance of _her_ nine
days' search; but, in the torch-light procession of the fifth night,
widens indefinitely and mysteriously in the darkness, until it has
inclosed all hearts within the circuit of its tumultuous flight. Thus,
by some secret sympathy with her movements, are gathered together
about the central Achtheia all the _Matres Dolorosoe,_--our Ladies of
Sorrow;--for, like her, they were all wanderers.

They were so by necessity. All unrest involves loss, and thus leads to
search. It matters not if the search be unsuccessful; though the gadfly
sting as sharply the next moment as it did the last, still so must
continue her wanderings. Therefore that Jew, whose mythic fate it is to
wait forever upon the earth, the victim of an everlasting sorrow, is
also an everlasting wanderer. All suffering necessitates movement,--and
when the suffering is intense, the movement passes over into flight.

Therefore it is that the epos of suffering requires not merely time for
its accomplishment, but also space. Ulysses, the "much-suffering," is
also the "much-wandering."

Thus our Lady in the Eleusinian procession of search represents the
restless search of all her children.

Migrations and colonizations, ancient or modern,--what were they but
flights from some phase of suffering,--name it as we may,--poverty,
oppression, or slavery? It was the same suffering Io who brought
civilization to the banks of the Nile.

Thus, from the very beginnings of history or human tradition, out of
the severities of Scythian deserts there has been an endless series of
flights,--nomadic invasions of tribes impelled by no merely barbarian
impulse, but by some