the folds of the drapery, give it something of a hieratic character, and to the modern observer may suggest a sort of kinship with the more chastened kind of Gothic work. But quite of the school of Praxiteles is the general character of the composition; the graceful waving of the hair, the fine shadows of the little face, of the eyes and lips especially, like the shadows of a flower--a flower risen noiselessly from its dwelling in the dust--though still with that fulness or heaviness in the brow, as of sleepy people, which, in the delicate gradations of Greek sculpture, distinguish the infernal deities from their Olympian kindred. The object placed in the hand may be, perhaps, a stiff, archaic flower, but is probably the partly consumed pomegranate--one morsel gone; the most usual emblem of Persephone being this mystical fruit, which, because of the multitude of its seeds, was to the Romans a symbol of fecundity, and was sold at the doors of the temple of Ceres, that the women might offer it there, and bear numerous children; and so, to the middle age, became a symbol of the fruitful earth itself; and then of that other seed sown in the dark under-world; and at last of that whole hidden region, so thickly sown, which Dante visited, Michelino painting him, [151] in the Duomo of Florence, with this fruit in his hand, and Botticelli putting it into the childish hands of Him, who, if men "go down into hell, is there also." There is an attractiveness in these goddesses of the earth, akin to the influence of cool places, quiet houses, subdued light, tranquillising voices. What is there in this phase of ancient religion for us, at the present day? The myth of Demeter and Persephone, then, illustrates the power of the Greek religion as a religion of pure ideas--of conceptions, which having no link on historical fact, yet, because they arose naturally out of the spirit of man, and embodied, in adequate symbols, his deepest thoughts concerning the conditions of his physical and spiritual life, maintained their hold through many changes, and are still not without a solemnising power even for the modern mind, which has once admitted them as recognised and habitual inhabitants; and, abiding thus for the elevation and purifying of our sentiments, long after the earlier and simpler races of their worshippers have passed away, they may be a pledge to us of the place in our culture, at once legitimate and possible, of the associations, the conceptions, the imagery, of Greek religious poetry in general, of the poetry of all religions. NOTES 117. +Transliteration: kalykôpis. Liddell and Scott definition: "Like a flower-bud, blushing, roseate." 118. +Transliteration: charis. Liddell and Scott definition: "favour, grace ... loveliness." 118. +Transliteration: theai semnai. Translation: "august goddesses." 124. *The great Greek myths are, in truth, like abstract forces, which ally themselves to various conditions.