thus unnaturally and impiously murdered, and restored him to life: in place of the shoulder which Ceres had eaten, Jupiter gave him a shoulder of ivory: and Pelops appears in the list of the most eminent founders of the Grecian nation.

All that remained was the punishment of Tantalus: Jupiter condemned him to Hell, and furnished him with a feast no less painful to Tantalus than the feast of Tantalus had been to the Gods: plagued with perpetual hunger, a bough, loaded with fruit the most delightful to the senses of sight and smell, hangs immediately before him but the moment it approaches his lips, a blast of wind never fails to drive it to a distance from him tormented with the most intolerable thirst he is plunged up to his chin in a refreshing stream; but he no sooner stoops to taste, than by fate the water retires from his lips, which never take in so much as a drop.

isyphus was a famous robber, who was accustomed to bury those he plundered under a heap of stones, and leave them to expire in lingering tortures: in Hell his sentence is to throw a stone of vast weight up to the top of an immense precipice: this he is never able to effect: the stone almost reaches the top, but never fails to bound down again: poor Sisyphus, eager to complete his task, puffs, and strains, and sweats, but all in vain the misery to which he is con• demned is, always to be engaged in performing what he can never effect.

The punishment of the Danaides* is similar to that of Sisyphus: Danaus king of Argos, was

h Homer. Od. 2. 581.

k Hor. l. iii.Od. xi. 15 et seqq.

i Id. λ. 592.

132

THE DANAIDES.

brother to Ægyptus king of Egypt: an oracle had foretold that Danaus should be deprived of his crown by a son of Egyptus: to defeat the prediction he had recourse to the following cruel expedient: Egyptus had fifty sons, and Danaus fifty daughters: Danaus married his fifty daughters to the sons of Egyptus, but with this injunction, that each one should murder her husband on the wedding-night, as he slept : forty-nine of the brides faithfully performed the mandate of their father; and for this unnatural action they were condemned to Hell: each is furnished with a bucket, and thus they are commanded to fill a large tun with water, the bottom of which is full of holes: their labour is incessant; but, however unconquerable are their exertions, they never approach an atom the nearer to the end of their task.

The scene of punishment in the future world was gloomy and horrible: Virgil' says, it is not lawful for any good or innocent beings ever to pass the threshold, and witness the measures of retribution which are there carried on: Phlegethon, the river of fire, flows round it: Tisiphone, the most terrible of the Furies, watches perpetually at the avenue; and the adamantine walls are of such strength that neither men nor Gods are of ability to demolish them.

The very thought of this eternal prison was enough to inspire sadness into every heart: but the mortal visitor of the infernal regions passed on by the gates of Tartarus, and entered Elysium: the air of this delicious retreat was fresh and elastic: the light gave a bright and soothing

1 Æn. vi. 568.

purplish tint to every thing it fell upon the trees were for ever green, the lawns for ever fresh, and the hearts of the inhabitants for ever cheerful: they employed themselves in athletic exercises, in dancing, and in concerts of vocal and instrumental music, or passed away their hours in not less agreeable contemplation and repose.

The persons for whom these happy seats were reserved, were such as during their abode on earth had shed their blood for their country, pious priests whose conduct throughout bad not been less exemplary than their profession was venerable, and men who had embellished human life by the invention of useful arts, or who had left behind them the remembrance of actions which were honoured by posterity.

It is clear that neither Tartarus nor Elysium were awarded, according to the Grecian mythology, but to the atrociously criminal or to the eminently meritorious: the bulk of ghosts wandered undistinguished in other tracts of the infernal regions, where their existence seems to have been joyless and uncomfortable: Homerm makes Achilles in the regions below declare "how gladly he would exchange his state for that of the poorest ploughboy;" and Virgil remarks of the self-destroyers, who he by no means places in Tartarus, "How greatly now do they wish that it were permitted them to sustain poverty and every earthly hardship, in the light of the sun!"

Beyond the regions both of Tartarus and Elysium is the last river of Hell, the river Lethe: the peculiar virtue of this stream was, that whoever drank of it forgot every thing that had ever hap

134 LETHE: TRANSMIGRATION.

pened to him: hence another of its names was the Water of Oblivion.

Pythagoras, Virgil, and many of the ancients inculcated the doctrine of transmigration: that is, that the souls of the deceased, after an interval of a thousand years, return once more into the upper world and are born: the thousand years is the tenet of Virgil°; Pythagoras seems to have admitted no interval: as it is certain that no one remembers any thing that happened to him in any pre-existent state, it was supposed that the souls which were under orders to revisit the light of the sun, first drank of the waters of Lethe, in consequence of which their minds became a pure blank: Pythagoras seems to havė been the only one who returned to life without drinking of the Lethe: for he said he recollected having once been Euphorbus at the siege of Troy, and at another time a cock: he forbad his scholars eating the flesh of animals, lest unawares they should devour their own parents.

CHAP. XVI.

OF THE GODS REPRESENTATIVE OF THE FACULTIES AND CONCEPTIONS OF THE MIND.

Mnemosyne.-The Muses.-The Graces.-Themis, or Justice. The Hours, or Seasons.-The Fates.Their Distaff, Spindle and Shears.-Story of Meleager and Althea.-Astræa.-The Golden, Silver, Brazen, and Iron Ages.-Nemesis.-The Furies, the most Terrible of all Superhuman Natures.-Death.Sleep.- Dreams.—Discord.— Momus. Impotence of his Censures.-Prayers.-Virtue.-Honour.-Prudence, Justice, Temperance, and Fortitude.-Hope. --Filial Duty.-Story of the Roman Charity.--Contumely, Impudence and Calumny.-Fortune.-Plutus.-Hygeia.-Hebe.-Hymen. -Fame.--Liberty.

NEXT to the Gods already spoken of, it is proper we should consider those deities which represent the faculties and conceptions of the mind: this is another of the great beauties of the Grecian mythology it not only imparted life and judg ment and will to inanimate natures, and peopled the very deserts with divinities: beside this it also substantiated mere abstractions, the unreal and fleeting ideas of the soul:

it gave to airy nothing

A local habitation and a name:

by means of this transformation, the poet talked to his Muse, and personified Health, and Liberty,