The creeds of old are dead or dying, and the celestial kings, who seemed so real to their worshipers, are mostly crownless phantoms now. Buddha, Laou-tsze, and Confucius, the wise men of the East, command the reverence of nearly half the world, and the Persian prophet has a few followers; but from these faiths the supernatural is vanishing. Millions yet believe that Krishna, the Christ of India, is the son of God; but this faith, too, is waning. The intellectual offspring of Plato's brilliant brain survive, but all that remains of his divine father is a mutilated effigy. The genial Sun still warms and lights the earth, but centuries have flown since Mithra, his beloved, received the adoration of mankind. The fire still glows upon the hearth, but the great Titan who brought it down from Heaven lives only in a poet's dream. The crimson nectar of the vine moves men to mirth and madness now as when the swan of Teos sang its praise, but Bacchus and the ancient mysteries are dead. Above storm-wrapped Olympus, as of old, is heard the thunder's awful peal, but it is not the voice of Zeus. The voice of this, the mightiest of all the gods, is hushed forever. The populous and ever-growing empire of the dead still flourishes, but in its solemn court Osiris no longer sits as judge. The mother, as of yore, presses to her loving heart her dimpled babe and fondly gazes into its azure eyes to woo its artless smile; but Egypt's star-crowned virgin and her royal child, who once received the homage of a world, are now but mythic dust. Manly beauty thrills our daughters' hearts with love's strange ecstasy, and the feigned suffering of the dying hero on the mimic stage moistens their eyes with tears; but Adonis sleeps in his Phoenician tomb, his slumbers undisturbed by woman's sobs. The purple flower, substance of his dear self, which Venus carried in her bosom, withered long ago. When, at eve, the summer shower bathes with its cooling drops the verdure of the fields, across the sun-kissed cloud which veils the Orient sky may still be seen the gorgeous bridge of Bifrost; but over its majestic arch the dauntless Odin rides no more. "The fair humanities of old religions, The power, the beauty, and the majesty, That had their haunts in dale, or piny mountain, Or forest by slow stream, or pebbly spring, Or chasms and watery depths; all these have vanished; They live no longer in the faith of reason." --Schiller.