of agriculture to man; at last only, is there a general recognition of a clearly-arrested outline, a tangible embodiment, which has solidified itself in the imagination of the people, they know not how. The worship of Demeter belongs to that older religion, nearer to the earth, which some have thought they could discern, behind the more definitely national mythology of Homer. She is the goddess of dark caves, and is not wholly free from monstrous form. She gave men the first fig in one place, the first poppy in another; in another, she first taught the old Titans to mow. She is the mother of the vine also; and the assumed name by which she called herself in her wanderings, is Dôs--a gift; the crane, as the harbinger of rain, is her messenger among the birds. She knows the magic powers of certain plants, cut from her bosom, to bane or bless; and, under one of her epithets, herself presides over the springs, as also coming from the secret places of the earth. She is the goddess, then, at first, of the fertility of the earth in its wildness; and so far, her attributes are to some degree confused with those of the Thessalian Gaia and the Phrygian Cybele. Afterwards, and it is now that her most characteristic attributes begin to concentrate themselves, [103] she separates herself from these confused relationships, as specially the goddess of agriculture, of the fertility of the earth when furthered by human skill. She is the preserver of the seed sown in hope, under many epithets derived from the incidents of vegetation, as the simple countryman names her, out of a mind full of the various experiences of his little garden or farm. She is the most definite embodiment of all those fluctuating mystical instincts, of which Gaia,* the mother of the earth's gloomier offspring, is a vaguer and mistier one. There is nothing of the confused outline, the mere shadowiness of mystical dreaming, in this most concrete human figure. No nation, less aesthetically gifted than the Greeks, could have thus lightly thrown its mystical surmise and divination into images so clear and idyllic as those of the solemn goddess of the country, in whom the characteristics of the mother are expressed with so much tenderness, and the "beauteous head" of Kore, then so fresh and peaceful.