left no trace of bloody wars, destroyed cities, and crushed nations, which constitute the chief subjects of history ever since men began to record the events of the world. All that happy time, when liberty and equality, justice and virtue, were still reigning, men lived like the gods in perfect security, without pains and cares, and exempt from the burdens of old age. The soil of the earth gave them fruits without laborious cultivation; unacquainted with sickness, they died away as if overtaken with sweet slumber; and when the lap of earth received their dust, the souls of the deceased, enveloped in light air, remained as genii with the survivors.

In this manner the poets portray those golden times on which imagination, wearied with the scenes of the busy world, dwells with so much delight.

Saturnalia were festivals celebrated in honor of Saturn, and were instituted long before the foundation of Rome, in commemoration of the freedom and equality that existed among the inhabitants of the earth during the golden reign of Saturn.

This festival was celebrated in December, and at first lasted but one day (the 19th); it was then extended to three, and subsequently, by order of Caligula and Claudius, to seven. This celebration was remarkable for the lib. erty that universally prevailed during its continuance. Servants were then allowed freedom with their masters; slaves were at liberty to be unruly without fear of punishment; and until the expiration of the festival, wore a cap on the head as a badge of freedom and equality. Ani mosity ceased; no criminals were. executed; nor was war ever declared during the Saturnalia, but every thing gave way to mirth and merriment. Schools were closed; the senate did not sit; and friends made presents to each other. It was also the custom to send wax tapers to

friends as an expression of good feeling; for the Romans, as a particular respect to this deity, kept torches and tapers continually burning upon his altars.

Among the Romans, the priest always performed the sacrifices with his head uncovered, a custom never observed before any other god.

Fetters were hung on his statues in commemoration of the chains he had worn when imprisoned by Jupiter. From this circumstance, slaves who obtained their liberty, generally dedicated their fetters to him. During the celebration of the Saturnalia, the chains were taken from the statues, to intimate the freedom and independence that mankind enjoyed during the golden age.

In his temple, and under his protection, the Romans placed their treasury, and also laid up the rolls containing the names of their people, because, in his time, no one was defrauded, and no theft was ever committed.

Saturn is generally represented by the ancients, as an old man, bent with age and infirmity; he holds the sickle or scythe given him by his mother, and a serpent biting its own tail, which is an emblem of time and the revolution of the year sometimes, he is leaning on his sickle and clothed in tattered garments; to these were added wings, and feet of wool, to express his fleet and silent course. Upon ancient gems, he is sometimes represented with a scythe in his hand, and leaning on the prow of a ship, on the side of which rises part of an edifice and a wall. This is probably in allusion to Saturn's having built the old city of Saturnia, near the Tiber, on the hills where Rome was afterwards founded. In this manner, Saturn sometimes appears as a symbol of all-destroying time, and sometimes, as a king who once reigned in Latium.

In the representations of the ancient deities, the imagi nation of the poet plays with grand images only. Its ob

jects are the great spectacles which nature exhibits-tho sky and the earth, the sea and the seditious elements, represented under the images of the Titans, the beaming sun and the shining moon; all which objects, being endowed with personality by a few striking features, afford better materials for poetry than for plastic art.

Out of the mist which envelopes these beings the more modern divine appearances spring forth in clear light, and distinct forms. Now, we behold Jove, the mighty god of thunder, with the eagle at his feet; Neptune, the shaker of the earth, with his trident; the majestic Juno, accompa nied with her peacock; Apollo in eternal youth, with his silver bow; the blue-eyed Minerva, with helmet and spear; the chaste Diana, with her bow and arrow; Mars, the god of war; and Mercury, the swift messenger of the divinities; by means of plastic art, these modern deities gain distinct forms, and their individual power and majesty thus embodied, and placed in temples and sacred groves, became to mortals an object of religious veneration and worship.

But the pristine deities were, in a certain respect, the models for the modern. Fancy merely caused the sublime objects of religious veneration that already existed, to be regenerated in a new and youthful form; ascribing to them descent, name, and native place, in order to unite them more intimately with the ideas and fates of mortals. But in the productions of Fancy, she does not bind herself to a certain and fixed series of beings, therefore we sometimes find the same deity under different forms. For the ideas of divine, supernatural power always existed; but in the course of time, they became so blended with stories of human life, that in the magic mirror of the dark ages of antiquity, almost all divine images are repeated as in a magnifying reflector; in this contexture of several fables, the imagination found more ample scope; a circumstance by which the poets of all ages did not fail to profit.

Henceforth the history of the gods is mingled with that of men. The wars among the former having ceased, there is now nothing worthy their attention but the lives and fates of mortals, with which they seem to trifle; arbitrarily exalting the one, and depressing the other, yet at the same time assisting heroes of eminent virtue and valor, and raising them to immortality.

PART SECOND.

MODERN, SUPERIOR DEITIES

ZEUS OR JUPITER.

HESIOD, in his Theogonia, invokes the Muses who in habit the heavenly mansions, and whose knowledge of gen eration and birth he had formerly sung.

"Tell, ye celestial powers," continues the poet, "how first the gods and world were made; the rivers, and the boundless sea with its raging surge. Also, the bright, shining stars, and wide stretched heaven above, and all the gods that sprang from them, givers of good things?" The Muses answer, "First of all existed Chaos; next in order the broad-bosomed Earth; then Love appeared, the most beautiful of immortals. From Chaos, sprang Erebus and dusky Night, and from Night and Erebus, came Ether and smiling Day.

"But first the Earth produced the starry Heavens, commensurate to herself; and the barren Sea, without mutual love. Then, conjoined with Uranos, she produced the tremendous Titans; after whom, Time, crooked in counsel, was produced, the youngest, and most dreadful of her children. The Cyclops were next engendered; Brontes, Steropes, and Arges, and besides these, three other rueful sons were born to Heaven and Earth, Cottus, Briareus,