We pray you, Astrophel, recount to us, now we are in the humour, the infancy of bright and dark spirits; for you have dipped deep, I know, into the Samothracian mysteries. ASTR. Know, then, that the birth-time of mythology and romance was in the primeval ages of man. The ancient heathens believed in the legends of their deities, as we have credence in modern history and biography; indeed, the _romance_ of the moderns was with the ancients _truth_. They had implicit faith in the presence of their gods, and that they might perchance meet them in the groves and hills, which were consecrated to their worship, and adorned with sculpture and idols in honour of the deities. Hence the profusion of their names and nature, recorded in the pages of the olden time, when the scribe traced his reed letter on the papyrus. From the climes of the sun came the orient tales of genie, and deeves, and peris; and of naiad, and nereid, and dryad, and hamadryad, from Greece and Rome. In the Koran shone forth the promised houris of Mahomet’s paradise; and its mysteries were echoed to us from the lips and tables of pilgrims and crusaders, who had blazoned their red cross in the holy wars. Thus was romance cradled and bosomed in religion. From the legends of the East, spring the fairy romances of our own days. The _Peri_ of Persia was the denizen of Peristan, as the _Ginn_ of Arabia was of Ginnistan, and the _Fairy_ of England of Fairyland; and we have their synonyms in the _Fata_ of Italy and the _Duerga_ of northern Europe. These spirits of romance are almost innumerable; for thus saith the “Golden Legend:” that “the air is full of sprites as the sonnebeams ben full of small motes, which is small dust or poudre.” The alchemyst Paracelsus asserts that the elements were peopled with life; the air with _sylphs_ and _sylvains_, the water with _ondines_, the earth with _gnomes_, and the fire with _salamanders_. And Martin Luther coincides with these assertions; nay, hath not Master Cross of Bristol illustrated the creed, and shown, by his galvanic power, an animated atom starting forth, as if by magic, from a flint, a seeming inorganic mass?