dered in the absence of a favorable stimulating subject matter, amidst unpropitious physical accompani

ments.

An illustration of the diverse results in intellectual activity arising from different habits of life, may be taken quite appositely from the apparently contrasted mental fancies of the Pelasgic and Thracian races, both themselves ethnic elements in the Grecian type. Says Mahaffy, "with the Pelasgi we are not much concerned. They were great builders and great reclaimers of land. They settled all over Greece, and especially in such rich plains as those of Thessaly and Argos. But their literary character is nowhere attested. Nor have we remaining any certain trace of their language, save the words Argos and Larissa, which point to these very tastes. They seem to have been a peace loving, quiet people; they must have been a settled and agricultural race; opposed to the roving pirates whom they doubtless dreaded."

The legends about the Thracians are of quite a different order. This remarkable people appear from the notices of the Iliad to have been allied rather to

*Col. Mure has said something quite similar to all this, but has also emphasized the qualitative importance of the Grecian genius itself. He says: "Had the Hellenic race, in the course of its early migrations, fixed its abode among the wilds of Scythia, we might at this day have been under as little obligation to its artists or authors as to those of the Tartar tribes who now inhabit the same regions. Had Greece, on the other hand, in the vicissitudes of human settlement, fallen to the lot of a swarm of Huns, centuries of brilliant sun and balmy air, would hardly have infused into them the spirit of Homer or Phidias." Critical History, &c., &c.

the Phrygians, than to the western Greeks; The Phrygians have been proved, from the extant words of the language to be not only Aryans, but Aryans of the European branch, and thus we can conceive an early culture among the great Phrygio-Thracian tribes extending to the borders of Thessaly.

These singers were especially devoted to the worship of the muses-three Goddesses, who are always associated with wells and water springs, and who were the special patronesses and inspirers of poetry. There are traces of these Thracian bards down through the mountains of Phocis to Delphi, and round about Parnassus; and still more certainly are they (and with them the worship of the Muses) associated with the northern slopes of Helicon. There is no range through all Greece so rich in springs and tumbling brooks as the northern slopes of Helicon, and men might well imagine it a favorite abode of goddesses, who loved this most speaking voice in nature. It is here that the author of the Theogony, ascribed to Hesiod-possibly Hesiod himself-fixes their abode, when he calls them to come from Pieria at the opening of his didactic poem.

Attic legends seem to indicate that the Thracians were not mere singers, and that they sought to ex

tend their influence still further. The legend of the war of Eumolpus, the Thracian warrior, king and bard, against Erectheus, king of Athens, implies that the Thracians extended their power from the slopes of Helicon, across the glades and gorges of Cithaerin to its last spur-the citadel of Eleusis.'

The Pelasgig environment and occupations were narcotic and indulgent, less stimulating than the wilder, freer, more dangerous life of the Thracians, and to the Thracian may very probably be traced the myths which form the subject matter of Greek imaginative writing for six centuries. Greek literature was itself a plant of natural and deliberate growth. Mahaffy tells us "everywhere in the history of Greek culture we find the same rude beginnings, and gradual growth, in grace and power."

It is only a false and random metaphor when older critics speak of epic poetry "springing like Athene full grown, and in panoply from the brain of a single Homer;" the great epic of the Iliad was the flower of an age of epic efforts, and through its wonderful power and interest it perpetuated in the cyclic poets the thread and strain of epic narrative, and it was still the subject matter that gave these epics character. It seems certainly true that from the great treasury of

mythology, a legacy of inexhaustible abundance and variety, the poets of Greece continually drew their subjects and their inspiration. Of Grecian drama Mahaffy says "above all, we must insist upon the staid and conservative character of all the Attic tragedy, the subjects were almost as fixed as the scenery, being always or almost always, subjects from the Trojan and Theban cycle, with occasional excursions into the myths about Heracles."

The melic poets, the lyricists, who composed odes in various measures, sung or danced and used in public ceremonies, or which were expressive of the personal devotion of the author, his friendship or his despair, were perhaps more spontaneous and new, but upon them was enforced at least the traditions and the taste acquired through historic evolution of the Greek people, a taste itself derivative from the contemplation and study of the great mythopoetic sources of their popular literature, the subject matter of their books.

Not simply, observe, that subject matter furnished them with topics, but that it trained their minds into ways of thinking, supplied them with a class of images that again reacted upon their speech, and directed them or led them into special avenues

of invention; that it became conjunct in their minds with the tone of those minds, and mingled a sway of its own, as a distinct determinable factor, with the more unique incommunicable sway of their own cerebral and physiological constitution.

For they dwelt in their themes upon the visible presence of Gods, upon their own lineal descent from -demi-gods, upon superhuman tragedies, and loves; they created before their minds ideals of action, and types of form surpassingly puissant and glorious, they lived within the charmed presence of divinity, and it was divinity whose heart beat with the emotions they felt themselves, and on whose cheeks flushed the signals of the same passions they acknowledged. The Greek by humanizing his gods raised his own mind into a serene empyrean of restrained and artistic impulses, and borrowed, by familiar intercourse with the beautiful conceptions of his Theogony, a delicate “animalism,” a choice aptitude for nice relations of form, a clear, bright, style, and a balanced intellectual vigor, warmth and directness.

In English Literature we find an example of letters which the world has recognized as lofty, diversified, inspiring and persistent. Throughout that marvellous history of writing, which commences in Saxon