Whether the figures in our Museum be actual toys, or counterfeit presentments of very swarthy gods, it is not in every instance easy to determine. From conjecture however we can turn to Herodotus; and certainly that worthy Halicarnassian tells us, in his second book, that in Egypt, on the festival of Osiris, or Bacchus, a puppet figure of the joyous god, a cubit in height, with some indecent mechanism moved by the pulling of a string, was carried in procession by the women. When previously speaking of the figure of Pan, he says, that the deity in question is worshiped under a form known not to be his real one, for a reason, he adds, which he “had rather not mention.” So, in the case of Bacchus, he confines himself to stating that there were “sacred and mysterious reasons” for the same. We are now aware that the unseemly practice was really a species of invocation that the earth might be impregnated with prolific virtue. We next arrive at articulated figures. The statue of Jupiter Ammon nodded to the attendant priests when he was about to prophesy. So Apollo, at Heliopolis, would not open his lips till his ministers had carried him whither he would go. Aloft on the shoulders of his bearers, he guided them as with reins. On being questioned, he graciously bowed his head, if he approved; or fell back, if he dissented. When placed on the ground of his temple, he was seen to ascend, without aid, till his head touched the roof; and there he remained fixed till prayers brought him down again. It is suggested that the magnet may have been employed to accomplish the feat. How this may have been defies aught but conjecture. Voluntary motion of inanimate objects was always an evidence of their divinity. When Juno paid her celebrated visit to Vulcan, she found him engaged in the manufacture of tripods, which moved about and performed their office with a bustling air of the most zealous assiduity. “Full twenty tripods for his hall he framed, That, placed on living wheels of massy gold, Wondrous to tell, instinct with spirit, roll’d From place to place around the blest abodes, Self-moved, obedient to the beck of gods.” We have here in England, if not tripods, at least bipeds, who can “instinct with spirit roll From place to place.”