From the preceding statements, the reader will observe that the divinities who were specially interested in the preservation of health were all females. This is an exceedingly interesting fact. It is not an incongruous one, either. The ancients were keenly alive to the sense of fitness in things; and hence it is hardly likely that they made a mistake in Hygeia, the health goddess. From the exercise of the great function of nurturing and caring for the young of the species, woman has sufficient claim to the distinction of being, _par excellence_, the guardian of health. Why the goddess should be a maid rather than a matron is not extremely clear. Likely the idea was to present in her a woman just mature and free from blemish, in a typically perfect state. However, we have in Hygeia, “daughter of Pæon, queen of every joy,” to use the appropriate words with which Armstrong starts off in the invocation to her, at the beginning of his fine poem,[435] a very interesting and beautiful conception. It is easy to understand why this divinity became very popular. O Goddess! if— “But for thee, Nature would sicken, nature soon would die,” as the author just quoted declares, thy worship might well have become universal, for without health life is burdensome, a gift of doubtful value! Health and long life are things mortals have always craved and always prized. In that interesting Hebræo-Chaldean history, “Tobias,” Sara, with her husband, gives utterance to a truly human prayer: “Have mercy on us, O Lord, have mercy on us, and let us grow old both together in health.”[436] “At heart,” says Dr. Brinton, “all prayers are for preservation; the burden of all litanies is a begging for life.”[437] The symbolic representation of the myth of Hygeia afforded a fine subject for the sculptors and other artists. Extremely attractive figures of her were produced. One of them, at least, is doubtless familiar to the reader. I have reference to the one in which she is represented as a blooming girl with a serpent twined around her left arm[438] and feeding out of a _patera_ or chalice held in her right hand. With this ideal in his mind, the late Dr. Aitken Meigs, in a remarkable address[439] delivered in 1879, pronounces “the high-born maid” to be “of beauty’s types, the highest, best idea,” and continues:—