lection; the editors chose only out of the mass before
them what was most noteworthy and trustworthy, and
what was of catholic rather than of national interest.
It is no more than a fraction of that singular mythology
which for so many ages delighted the Christian world,
which is still held in external reverence among the
Romanists, and of which the modern historians,
provoked by its feeble supernaturalism, and by the entire
absence of critical ability among its writers to distinguish
between fact and fable, have hitherto failed to speak a
reasonable word. Of the attempt in our own day to
revive an interest in them we shall say little in this
place. They have no form or beauty to give them
attraction in themselves; and for their human interest,
the broad atmosphere of the world suited ill with these
delicate plants which had grown up under the shadow
of the convent wall; they were exotics, not from
another climate, but from another age; the breath of
scorn fell on them, and having no root in the hearts
and beliefs of men any more, but only in the
sentimentalities and make-beliefs, they withered and sank. And
yet, in their place as historical phenomena they are as
remarkable as any of the pagan mythologies; to the
full as remarkable, perhaps far more so, if the length
and firmness of hold they once exercised on the
conviction of mankind is to pass for anything in the
estimate--and to ourselves they have a near and
peculiar interest, as spiritual facts in the growth of the
catholic faith.

Philosophy has rescued the old theogonies from
ridicule; their extravagancies, even the most grotesque
of them, can be now seen to have their root in an idea,
often a deep one, representing features of natural history
or of metaphysical speculation--and we do not laugh
at them any more. In their origin, they were the
consecration of the first-fruits of knowledge; the
expression of a real reverential belief. Then time did its
work on them; knowledge grew and they could not
grow; they became monstrous and mischievous, and
were driven out by Christianity with scorn and indignation.
But it is with human institutions, as it is with
men themselves; we are tender with the dead when
their power to hurt us has passed away; and as Paganism
can never more be dangerous, we have been able to
command a calmer attitude towards it, and to detect
under its most repulsive features sufficient latent
elements of genuine thought to satisfy us that