ng readers to have this fixed in their minds, even by chance
association. There are more statues of Pasht in the British Museum than
of any other Egyptian deity; several of them fine in workmanship; nearly
all in dark stone, which may be, presumably, to connect her, as the
moon, with the night; and in her office of avenger, with grief.

Thoth (p. 27, line 17), is the Recording Angel of Judgment; and the
Greek Hermes Phre (line 20), is the Sun.

Neith is the Egyptian spirit of divine wisdom; and the Athena of the
Greeks. No sufficient statement of her many attributes, still less of
their meanings, can be shortly given; but this should be noted
respecting the veiling of the Egyptian image of her by vulture
wings--that as she is, physically, the goddess of the air, this bird,
the most powerful creature of the air known to the Egyptians, naturally
became her symbol. It had other significations; but certainly this, when
in connection with Neith. As representing her, it was the most important
sign, next to the winged sphere, in Egyptian sculpture; and, just as in
Homer, Athena herself guides her heroes into battle, this symbol of
wisdom, giving victory, floats over the heads of the Egyptian kings. The
Greeks, representing the goddess herself in human form, yet would not
lose the power of the Egyptian symbol, and changed it into an angel of
victory. First seen in loveliness on the early coins of Syracuse and
Leontium, it gradually became the received sign of all conquest, and the
so-called 'Victory' of later times; which, little by little, loses its
truth, and is accepted by the moderns only as a personification of
victory itself,--not as an actual picture of the living Angel who led to
victory. There is a wide difference between these two conceptions,--all
the difference between insincere poetry, and sincere religion. This I
have also endeavoured farther to illustrate in the tenth Lecture; there
is however one part of Athena's character which it would have been
irrelevant to dwell upon there; yet which I must not wholly leave
unnoticed.

As the goddess of the air, she physically represents both its beneficent
calm, and necessary tempest: other storm-deities (as Chrysaor and AEolus)
being invested with a subordinate and more or less malignant function,
which is exclusively their own, and is related to that of Athena as the
power of Mars is related to hers in war. So also Virgil makes her able
to wield the lightning herself,