It is unfortunate that the painter is at a loss to deal with the majestic scenes in great Juno's story. How is he to depict her flying in the celestial chariot between heaven and earth, each leap of the fiery coursers measuring the range of the eye from a lofty peak across the sea to the endless haze? How can he paint her anointed with ambrosial oil which is ever struggling for freedom to bathe the rolling earth in fragrance? He may add a hundred tassels to her girdle; perhaps give her the triple grace-showering eardrops, and even the dazzling sun-bright veil; but the girdle of Aphrodite, which peeps from her bosom, will fail to turn the brains of men, or pierce their hearts with rays of soft desire. And the more dreadful side of Hera's history would equally trouble the despairing artist, for dire anger and jealousy ill-become the countenance of a goddess. The smouldering fire must never leap into flame. Eyes may not flash, not the lips quiver, and the noble brow must be free from fitful thought. So with Hera there is no middle course for the painter. He must represent her alone, calm and passionless, unfathomable, with a sublime disregard of earth; or else join with his predecessors and drag her down to a mundane level in scenes of trivial fable. But there is room for untold Heras of the higher type. DEMETER Matron-Guardian of the yielding soil; heart-stricken wanderer over the earth; mysterious silent Food-Mother whom all men love and the gods revere; eternal life-preserver; fruitful, but passionless save where the vision of Pluto looms, Iasus and Poseidon notwithstanding! Such was the Demeter of the ancient Greeks till the hordes of Alexander mingled her fame with the lustre from Isis and De. So the mourning _haute dame_ of Olympus came nearer the seat of her care, nearer the dread home of her daughter: passed from Homer to Theocritus; from the adoration of the higher priesthood of Greece, to become merged in the Ceres of Rome, the goddess beloved of the lowly, who received the first fruits of the field amidst joyful measures of dance and song. But it is the _haute dame_ that strikes our imagination--the staid and mystic Demeter of Eleusis, and not the Ceres of the Roman lyric. The light-hearted Ceres, as a beautiful woman in the prime of life, may be adorned with poppies and wheat-ears, may stand serene and smiling as a symbol of harvest or the goddess of a Latin temple; but paint her as one will, she will do little more than serve to show how fallen are the idols--how immeasurable is the descent from the stately Earth-Mother whose image would be stamped on the brain of a Phidias.