We are wont to regard the Grecian mythology, and its many-coloured world of fables, only as the beautiful effusion of poetry, or a playful creation of fancy; and we never think of enquiring deeply or minutely into its details, or of examining its moral import and influence. It is the more natural that the mythology of the Greeks should produce this impression on our minds, and that we should regard it in this light, as all the higher ideas and severer doctrines on the God-head, its sovereign nature and infinite might, on the eternal wisdom and providence that conducts and directs all things to their proper end, on the infinite Mind, and supreme Intelligence that created all things, and that is raised far above external nature; all these higher ideas and severer doctrines have been expounded more or less perfectly by Pythagoras, or by Anaxagoras and Socrates; and have been developed in the most beautiful and luminous manner by Plato and the philosophers that followed him. But all this did not pass into the popular religion of the Greeks, and it remained for the most part a stranger to these exalted doctrines; and, though we find in this mythology many things capable of a deeper import and more spiritual signification, yet they appear but as rare vestiges of ancient truth--vague presentiments--fugitive tones--momentary flashes, revealing a belief in a supreme Being, an almighty Creator of the universe, and the common Father of mankind. But it is far otherwise in the Indian mythology. There, amid a sensual idolatry of nature more passionate and enthusiastic still than that of the Greeks, amid Pagan fictions and conceptions far more gigantic than those of the latter, we find almost all the truths of natural theology, not indeed without a considerable admixture of error, expressed with the utmost earnestness and dignity. We meet too, in this mythology, with the most rigidly scientific and metaphysical notions of the Supreme Being, his attributes and his relations; and it is the peculiar character of the Indian mythology to combine a gigantic wildness of fantasy, and a boundless enthusiasm for nature, with a deep mystical import, and a profound philosophic sense. If the Pythagoreans had succeeded in the design, which they in all probability entertained, of rendering their lofty notions on the Deity and on man, on the immortality of the soul, and the invisible world, more generally prevalent, and of introducing these ideas into the popular religion; as it was not their intention entirely to reject the vulgar creed, but only to mould it to their own principles, and impart to it a higher and more spiritual sense, (an attempt which was afterwards made by the New Platonists and the Emperor Julian, out of hatred to Christianity, though, as the time had then long gone by, their enterprise was attended with no permanent effects); if the Pythagoreans, we say, had succeeded in their design, the Greek