forms with supple skill
The gymnast's grace.

"'Tis thine the unbodied spirits of the blessed,
To guide to bliss, and with thy _golden rod_
To rule the shades; above, below, caressed
By every god."

Mercury, as we have seen, was among the Ancients, only another name for
Noah. "Indeed," says Dr. Clarke, "some of the representations of Mercury
upon ancient vases are actually taken from the scenic exhibitions of the
Grecian theatre; and that these exhibitions were also the prototypes
whereon D'Hancarville shows Mercury, Momus, and Psyche delineated as we
see Harlequin, Columbine, and Clown on our stages. The old man
(Pantaloon), is Charon (the ferryman of hell). The Clown is Momus, the
buffoon of heaven, the god of raillery and wit, and whose large gaping
mouth is in imitation of the ancient masks."

Amongst the Aryans, Medians, Egyptians, Chaldeans, Babylonians, and
other nations (including our own, as did not Lilly predict the execution
of Charles I., the plague, the great fire of London, and other events)
was astrology practised. The Egyptians peopled the constellation of the
Zodiac (the first open book for mankind to read), with Genii, and one of
the twelve Zodiacal signs was Aries (the Ram). The ram is of the same
species as the goat, and the god Pan was the Goat god, as we know. The
astrologers, in their divinations and rulings of the planets placed the
various parts of the body under a planetary influence. The head and face
were assigned to the house of Aries, and therefore the face notably for
the Pantomimic Art was placed by the ancient astrologers under the
influence of this particular planet.

The heathen worship of Pan was not only known in Arcadia, but also
throughout Greece, although it did not reach Athens until after
Marathon.

Of Pan's death Plutarch tells the story that in the reign of Tiberius,
one Thamus, a pilot, visiting the islands of Paxae, was told of this
god's death. When he reached Palodes he told the news, whereupon loud
and great lamentations were heard, as of Nature herself expressing her
grief. The epoch of the story coincides with the enactment of that grim,
and the world's greatest tragedy on the hill of Golgotha, and the end,
and the beginning of a new world. Rabelais, Milton, Schiller, and also
Mrs. Browning, have allusions to this story of Plutarch's.

The ambitious family of the Titans (the bones of the "giants on the
earth" before the Deluge, gave ris