Olympus, and conceived of Olympus as a towered city upon a white hill. Looming up out of the deep blue arch, it was vast and covered the whole plateau: I saw the walls of it run up and down the ridges, in and out of the gorges which cut into the mass. It had gates, but I never saw forms of any who entered or left it. It was full of light, and had the look of habitancy about it; but I saw no folk. Only at rare moments of time while I hovered afar off looking at the wonder and radiance of it, the Gods appeared above the battlements in a shining row--still and awful, each of them ten feet high. These were fine dreams for a boy of sixteen in a schoolhouse dormitory. They were mine, though: but I dreamed them awake. I awoke before they began, always, and used to sit up trembling and wait for them. An apologue, if you please. On the sacred road from Athens to Eleusis, about midway of its course, and just beyond the pass, there is a fork in it, and a stony path branches off and leads up into the hills. There, in the rock, is a shallow cave, and before that, where once was an altar of Aphrodite, the ruins of her shrine and precinct may be seen. As I was going to Eleusis the other day, I stopped the carriage to visit the place. Now, beside the cave is a niche, cut square in the face of the rock, for offerings; and in that niche I found a fresh bunch of field flowers, put there by I know not what dusty-foot wayfarer. That was no longer ago than last May, and the man who did the piety was a Christian, I suppose. So do I avow myself, without derogation, I hope, to the profession; for no more than Mr. Robert Kirk, a minister of religion in Scotland in the seventeenth century, do I consider that a knowledge of the Gods is incompatible with belief in God. There is a fine distinction for you: I believe that God exists; I infer him by reason stimulated by desire. But I know that the Gods exist by other means than those. If I could be as sure of God as I am of the Gods, I might perhaps be a better Christian, but I should not believe any less in the Gods. * * * * * I found religion through Homer: I found poetry through Milton, whose _Comus_ we had to read for examination by some learned Board. If any one thing definitely committed me to poesy it was that poem; and as has nearly always happened to me, the crisis of discovery came in a flash. We were all there ranked at our inky desks on some drowsy afternoon. The books lay open before us, the lesson, I suppose, prepared. But what followed had not been prepared--that some one began to read: "The star that bids the shepherd fold Now the top of Heav'n doth hold; And the gilded car of day His glowing axle doth allay In the steep Atlantic stream"--