Metals, besides, present themselves only by exception in the native state; they are commonly disguised under some form of ore, subterraneanly bestowed. Nature holds them concealed in her bosom, or at most attracts the eye with niggardly samples of her treasures. The very word _metal_, indeed, records a ‘quest,’ a searching for something hidden; and it is remarkable that these substances have been least effective for promoting culture just where they have come most readily to hand. By the shores of Lake Superior pure copper can be quarried like sandstone; and it was, in fact, cut away and hammered into axes and knives by Indian tribes long before they came into contact with Europeans. A similar use has been made of meteoric iron by the Esquimaux. But no development of ingenuity resulted in either case. And for this reason among others, that the metal was used _cold_. It received essentially the treatment of stone, and made very much the same kind of response. Because smelting processes were not needed, forging processes were not thought of. The furnace was absent, and with it the power of rendering metals plastic to human wants and purposes. There was, then, good warrant for the figuring, as the arch-metallurgist of mythology, of the incorporated element of fire. Hephæstus was the Homeric Wayland Smith. He embodied the antique, universal notion of magic metallurgy, but embodied it after a dignified manner suitable to the grand epical standard. Homer was not given to repeating folk-stories current among the lower strata of—shall we say?—Pelasgian society. His associations were with courts and camps, his sympathies with heroic achievements and maritime adventures in distant, perhaps fabulous, countries. There, indeed, grotesque aboriginal fancies might be permitted to flourish; but they were excluded as much as possible from the sunlit spaces of the Hellenic world. Even here they crept in unbidden, for the Homeric theology is by no means exempt from the influence of rustic persuasions. But these were only admitted after passing through the alembic of fine fancy or ennobling thought. Thus, Hephæstus, although he has not wholly put off the semblance of the ‘drudging goblin’ of caves and cairns, stands for a formidable nature-power, and possesses the capability of being sublime. Panting, perspiring, shaggy, and limping, he is still no dubious divinity, but a genuine Olympian. His dwelling is on the mountain of the gods; he shares their councils; his operations are at the command of none; he is self-directed and self-inspired with his art, having taken to the hammer and anvil as spontaneously as the infant Hermes took to music and thievery. Indeed, the ill-used, yet not ill-natured, son of Heré surpasses his progenitors in one important respect. He is the only one of the Homeric gods in whom some remnant of creative power remains active. He alone commands a glimmer of the Promethean spark, half-hidden