A long-subsequent but most ancient and cultivated people, whose memory has, for us, almost faded from the earth, will thereafter embalm the great drama in legends, myths, prayers, poems, and sagas; fragments of which are found to-day dispersed through all literatures in all lands; some of them, as we shall see, having found their way even into the very Bible revered alike of Jew and Christian: The Edda continues, "Then again The wonderful Golden tablets Are found in the grass In time's morning, The leader of the gods And Odin's race Possessed them." And what a find was that! This poor remnant of humanity discovers "the golden tablets" of the former {p. 153} civilization. Doubtless, the inscribed tablets, by which the art of writing survived to the race; for what would tablets be without inscriptions? For they talk of "the ancient runes of mighty Odin," that is, of the runic letters, the alphabetical writing. And we shall see hereafter that this view is confirmed from other sources. There follows a happy age: "The fields unsown Yield their growth; All ills cease. Balder comes. Hoder and Balder, Those heavenly gods, Dwell together in Odin's halls." The great catastrophe is past. Man is saved, The world is once more fair. The sun shines again in heaven. Night and day follow each other in endless revolution around the happy globe. Ragnarok is past. {p. 154} CHAPTER V. THE CONFLAGRATION OF PHAËTON Now let us turn to the mythology of the Latins, as preserved in the pages of Ovid, one of the greatest of the poets of ancient Rome.[1] Here we have the burning of the world involved in the myth of Phaëton, son of Phœbus--Apollo--the Sun--who drives the chariot of his father; he can not control the horses of the Sun, they run away with him; they come so near the earth as to set it on fire, and Phaëton is at last killed by Jove, as he killed Typhon in the Greek legends, to save heaven and earth from complete and common ruin. This is the story of the conflagration as treated by a civilized mind, explained by a myth, and decorated with the flowers and foliage of poetry. We shall see many things in the narrative of Ovid which strikingly confirm our theory. Phaëton, to prove that he is really the son of Phœbus, the Sun, demands of his parent the right to drive his chariot for one day. The sun-god reluctantly consents, not without many pleadings that the infatuated and rash boy would give up his inconsiderate ambition. Phaëton persists. The old man says: "Even the ruler of vast Olympus, who hurls the ruthless bolts with his terrific right hand, can not guide [1. "The Metamorphoses," book xi, fable 1.] {p. 155}