It is one of the graves of that old religion, but with much still fresh in it. We see it with its provincial superstitions, and its curious magic rites, but also with its means of really solemn impressions, in the culminating forms of Greek art; the two faces of the Greek religion confronting each other here, and the whole having that rare peculiarity of a kind of personal stamp upon it, the place having been designed to meet the fancies of one particular soul, or at least of one family. It is always difficult to bring the every- day aspect of Greek religion home to us; but even the slighter details of this little sanctuary help us to do this; and knowing so little, as we do, of the greater mysteries of [143] Demeter, this glance into an actual religious place dedicated to her, and with the air of her worship still about it, is doubly interesting. The little votive figures of the goddesses, in baked earth, were still lying stored in the small treasury intended for such objects, or scattered about the feet of the images, together with lamps in great number, a lighted lamp being a favourite offering, in memory of the torches with which Demeter sought Persephone, or from some sense of inherent darkness in these gods of the earth; those torches in the hands of Demeter being indeed originally the artificial warmth and brightness of lamp and fire, on winter nights. The dirae or spells,--katadesmoi+- -binding or devoting certain persons to the infernal gods, inscribed on thin rolls of lead, with holes, sometimes, for hanging them up about those quiet statues, still lay, just as they were left, anywhere within the sacred precinct, illustrating at once the gloomier side of the Greek religion in general, and of Demeter and Persephone especially, in their character of avenging deities, and as relics of ancient magic, reproduced so strangely at other times and places, reminding us of the permanence of certain odd ways of human thought. A woman binds with her spell the person who seduces her husband away from her and her children; another, the person who has accused her of preparing poison for her husband; another devotes one who has not restored a borrowed [144] garment, or has stolen a bracelet, or certain drinking-horns; and, from some instances, we might infer that this was a favourite place of worship for the poor and ignorant. In this living picture, we find still lingering on, at the foot of the beautiful Greek marbles, that phase of religious temper which a cynical mind might think a truer link of its unity and permanence than any higher aesthetic instincts--a phase of it, which the art of sculpture, humanising and refining man's conceptions of the unseen, tended constantly to do away. For the higher side of the Greek religion, thus humanised and refined by art, and elevated by it to the sense of beauty, is here also.