The night hunter, lifting a bright eye Up toward the crescent moon, with grateful heart Called on the lovely wanderer who bestow'd That timely light to share his joyous sport. And hence a beaming goddess, with her nymphs, Across the lawn, and through the darksome grove (Not unaccompanied with tuneful notes, By echo multiplied from rock or cave), Swept in the storm of chase, as moon and stars Glance rapidly along the clouded heaven When winds are blowing strong. The traveller slacked His thirst from rill or gushing fount, and thank'd The Naiad. Sunbeams, upon distant hills Gliding apace, with shadows in their train, Might, with small help from fancy, be transformed Into fleet Oreads sporting visibly. The Zephyrs fanning, as they passed, their wings, Lacked not for love fair objects, whom they wooed With gentle whisper. Withered boughs grotesque, Stripped of their leaves and twigs by hoary age, From depth of shaggy covert peeping forth In the low vale, or on steep mountain side-- And sometimes intermixed with stirring horns Of the live deer, or goat's depending beard-- These were the lurking Satyrs, a wild brood Of gamesome deities; or Pan himself, The simple shepherd's awe-inspiring god. Similar ideas are expressed in an article on the Nature of Early History, by a celebrated English scholar, [Footnote: Henry George Liddell, D. D., Dean of Christchurch College, Oxford.] who says: "The legends, or mythic fables, of the Greeks are chiefly connected with religious ideas, and may mostly be traced to that sort of awe or wonder with which simple and uneducated minds regard the changes and movements of the natural world. The direct and easy way in which the imagination of such persons accounts for marvelous phenomena, is to refer them to the operation of Persons. When the attention is excited by the regular movements of sun, and moon, and stars, by the alternations of day and night, by the recurrence of the seasons, by the rising and falling of the seas, by the ceaseless flow of rivers, by the gathering of clouds, the rolling of thunder, and the flashing of lightning, by the operations of life in the vegetable and animal worlds--in short, by any exhibition of an active and motive power--it is natural for uninstructed minds to consider such changes and movements as the work of divine Persons. In this manner the early Greek legends associate themselves with personifications of the powers of Nature. All attempts to account for the marvels which surround us are foregone; everything is referred to the immediate operation of a god. 'Cloud-compelling Zeus' is the author of the phenomenon of the air; 'Earth-shaking Pos-ei'don,' of all that happens in the water under the earth; Nymphs are attached to every spring or tree; De-me'ter, or Mother Earth, for six months rejoices in the presence of Proserpine, [Footnote: In some legends Proserpine is regarded as the daughter