purest and most elevating of the heathen religions. It is, then, with Athéné and her worship that we have now to do. ATHÉNÉ.--We must pause to devote a few words to the description of the qualities and attributes of this goddess who inspired these works of art, once so perfect. Athéné (or Pallas-Athéné, as she is frequently called) was the fair daughter of Zeus or Jupiter.[3] In her, "power and wisdom were harmoniously blended; she appears as the preserver of the State, and of everything which gives to the State strength and prosperity. She was the protectress of agriculture." With the Greeks, those most superstitious people, every fresh invention that led the way for the arts of civilisation was at once attributed to the inspiration of a god, thus "Athéné was said to have invented the plough and the rake, and to have created the olive tree"--that tree of so much importance in all Eastern countries, where the fruit is often an article of daily food, and the oil extracted from the olives is also serviceable for domestic purposes. As Apollo is associated with the sun, so Athéné is associated with the dawn, which wakes men from their slumbers when there is work to be done. She is therefore the goddess of industry and work, which daylight brings to all mortals. Athéné was thus the goddess of industry in every form. Besides agriculture, she was the patroness of arts and artificers, of embroidery and spinning, and all kinds of women's needlework. Also of intelligent and scientific warfare, as opposed to Ares (or Mars), the other Greek god of war, who was the god of "blind brute force," while she is called the "preventer of war," "the defender of towns." She protected the State from outward enemies, and, as the patron divinity, she maintained the authority of law and order in the courts of the assembly of the people. It was she who was believed to have instituted the Court of the Areopagus, the Court of Justice, at Athens. She was, moreover, good and pure, a virgin deity whose heart was inaccessible to the passion of love. [Illustration] [Illustration] Such are the many attributes of this beneficent goddess--ever young and ever strong, but thoughtful and serious--the beautiful, blue-eyed Athéné. Sometimes she is represented by artists in her warlike character; she then wears a golden helmet adorned with sphinxes, a breastplate of armour over her woman's drapery, the terrible snake-wreathed Medusa head in the centre, which turned to stone all who looked on it; she grasps her long spear in one hand, and holds her shield with the other. But, as often, we meet with her in her character of goddess of the peaceful arts. Then, her hair waves in long curls over her shoulders from beneath her helmet, but her dreadful corslet is put off, and instead of the spear she carries the spindle, emblem of domestic work, or feeds the serpent of Æsculapius (god of medicine)--type of the kindly acts of peace.