A shade of sadness came over my father’s face; for he saw that the subtile and powerful sphere of this Grecian nature-worship had awakened the activities of my own sensuous life. “Yes, my son; these are phantasms. These are wicked Grecian spirits who are personating their gods and goddesses, their heroes and heroines. You see before you what wonders spirits can achieve by magic and fantasy. This is the sphere which flows into and governs the present population of Greece. These spirits would, if they could, obsess and control the human race. The interior state of these souls is terrible.” “O, do not show it to me yet,” I exclaimed. “Let me contemplate a little longer this marvelous scene.” “When all these spirits are judged,” continued my father, “and cast out of the world of spirits, the Greece and Rome of the natural world will become feeble and death-stricken. Their oracles will become silent; their arts will fail; their glory perish; their civilization decay. Their very languages will die. Their exact modes of thought will no more be possible to men. Ages of bondage and darkness will ensue, after the light they have perverted and the liberty they have profaned.” I scarcely heard these last words; for the vast assembly of gods and men, which had been in comparative repose, became suddenly animated by a wild excitement. There issued from the cool and leafy forests on all sides a crowd of beautiful nymphs headed by Diana, resplendent as a statue of pearl, clad in an apron of green leaves and flowers, and with a constellation of fire-flies in her hair. Her merry troop of nymphs, arrayed like herself, were flying in affected fear from the jolly god Bacchus, who appeared in pursuit, crowned with vine leaves and berries and drawn by his Indian tigers striped with ebony and gold. He was followed by a rabble rout of Fauns and Satyrs and bacchanalian revelers, male and female. This beautiful chaos threw itself pell-mell, reeling and whirling and dancing, shouting and singing, into the midst of the brilliant assembly. A scene of the wildest carnival followed. The heroes and heroines caught the contagious frenzy, and soon all were entangled in the embraces of the maddest dance that ever was witnessed. Neptune and his water-nymphs sprang high into the air to view the scene; and all the deities in Olympus crowded down to the Gates of Cloud, which they illumined afar off by the sun-like radiance of their presence. I was gazing on this scene with the utmost astonishment, when my eyes fell suddenly upon Helena, the beautiful daughter of Calisthenes. “My father,” said I, with profound emotion, “do you not see that superb figure of a woman more beautiful than all these goddesses, leaning against yonder tree and clapping her hands with delight at the drunken Bacchus making love to Venus? That is Helena of Athens! the dream of my life, the idol of my soul.”