orts of
disguises. The larger number betook themselves to Egypt, where for
greater security they assumed the forms of animals, as is generally
known. Just in the same way, they had to take flight again, and seek
entertainment in remote hiding-places, when those iconoclastic zealots,
the black brood of monks, broke down all the temples, and pursued the
gods with fire and curses. Many of these unfortunate emigrants, now
entirely deprived of shelter and ambrosia, must needs take to vulgar
handicrafts, as a means of earning their bread. Under these
circumstances, many whose sacred groves had been confiscated, let
themselves out for hire as wood-cutters in Germany, and were forced to
drink beer instead of nectar. Apollo seems to have been content to take
service under graziers, and as he had once kept the cows of Admetus, so
he lived now as a shepherd in Lower Austria. Here, however, having
become suspected on account of his beautiful singing, he was recognised
by a learned monk as one of the old pagan gods, and handed over to the
spiritual tribunal. On the rack he confessed that he was the god Apollo;
and before his execution he begged that he might be suffered to play
once more upon the lyre, and to sing a song. And he played so
touchingly, and sang with such magic, and was withal so beautiful in
form and feature, that all the women wept, and many of them were so
deeply impressed that they shortly afterwards fell sick. And some time
afterwards the people wished to drag him from the grave again, so that a
stake might be driven through his body, in the belief that he had been a
vampire, and that the sick women would by this means recover. But they
found the grave empty."

The Renaissance of the fifteenth century was, in many things, great
rather by what it designed than by what it achieved. Much which it
aspired to do, and did but imperfectly or mistakenly, was accomplished
in what is called the eclaircissement of the eighteenth century, or in
our own generation; and what really belongs to the rival of the
fifteenth century is but the leading instinct, the curiosity, the
initiatory idea. It is so with this very question of the reconciliation
of the religion of antiquity with the religion of Christ. A modern
scholar occupied by this problem might observe that all religions may be
regarded as natural products; that, at least in their origin, their
growth, and decay, they have common laws, and are not to be isolated
from the o