of Mother Earth, or Ceres, and a personification of the growing corn.] the green herb, her daughter, and for six months regrets her absence in dark abodes beneath the earth. "This tendency to deify the powers of Nature is due partly to a clear atmosphere and sunny climate, which incline a people to live much in the open air in close communion with all that Nature offers to charm the senses and excite the imagination; partly to the character of the people, and partly to the poets who in early times wrought these legendary tales into works which are read with increased delight in ages when science and method have banished the simple faith which procured acceptance for these legends. "Among the Greeks all these conditions were found existing. They lived, so to say, out-of-doors; their powers of observation were extremely quick, and their imagination singularly vivid; and their ancient poems are the most noble specimens of the old legendary tales that have been preserved in any country." This tendency of the Grecian mind is also very happily set forth in the following lines by PROFESSOR BLACKIE: The old Greek men, the old Greek men-- No blinking fools were they, But with a free and broad-eyed ken Looked forth on glorious day. They looked on the sun in their cloudless sky, And they saw that his light was fair; And they said that the round, full-beaming eye Of a blazing GOD was there! They looked on the vast spread Earth, and saw The various fashioned forms, with awe Of green and creeping life, And said, "In every moving form, With buoyant breath and pulses warm, In flowery crowns and veined leaves, A GODDESS dwells, whose bosom heaves With organizing strife." They looked and saw the billowy sea, With its boundless rush of water's free, Belting the firm earth, far and wide, With the flow of its deep, untainted tide; And wondering viewed, in its clear blue flood, A quick and scaly-glancing brood, Sporting innumerous in the deep With dart, and plunge, and airy leap; And said, "Full sure a GOD doth reign King of this watery, wide domain, And rides in a car of cerulean hue O'er bounding billows of green and blue; And in one hand a three-pronged spear He holds, the sceptre of his fear, And with the other shakes the reins Of his steeds, with foamy, flowing manes, And coures o'er the brine; And when he lifts his trident mace, Broad Ocean crisps his darkling face, And mutters wrath divine; The big waves rush with hissing crest, And beat the shore with ample breast, And shake the toppling cliff: