But perhaps the most important dictum which Pater lays down in the essay is this—that “in the application of these theories, the student of Greek religion must never forget that, after all, it is with poetry, not with systematic theological belief or dogma, that he has to do.” In the second part of the essay he traces the myth through its treatment by many hands, the hands of poets, the hands of sculptors, each adding something of their own restless and eager personality to these figures of the “goddesses of the earth, akin to the influence of cool places, quiet houses, subdued light, tranquillising voices.” It is here that he conceives the secret to lie—that in the perceptions of these old imaginings we may not only draw nearer to the heart of the ancient world, but that they may bring us too, by sweet association and delicate shadowy imagery, some uplifting and enlarging of our own sympathies and hopes. The “Hippolytus Veiled” (1889) is a much later work, but it will be as well to treat of it here, though it belongs less to the stricter archaeological studies, and more to the series of _Imaginary Portraits_. Pater takes the old sad legend of Hippolytus, the child of Theseus and an Amazon, the type of a stainless and almost froward chastity, which brings with it the penalty of the scorning of divine influence, of natural law; and embroiders out of it an elaborate and beautiful story, heaped with rich and fervid accessories. He points out first the exquisite finish, the clear-cut detail, which characterises even the smallest and daintiest of Greek legends; “the impression of Greece generally,” he says, is “but enhanced by the littleness of the physical scene of events intellectually so great—such a system of grand lines, restrained within so narrow a compass, as in one of its fine coins.” And thus he illustrates that salient characteristic of Greek life—the absence of centralisation, the intensity with which so vivid a life burnt sharply at so many provincial centres simultaneously. Then comes the story, the noble child so carefully nurtured by the desolate sorrowing mother, acquiring in and through her woe all the arts of simple seemly living, in order that she may delicately nurture the child of her fall. Pater brings the lonely cave-life before one—the wax-tapers, the hunger of the boy so daintily satisfied, his eager prattling alertness, the joyful days, overshadowed only by the thought that they were surely passing. Then the boy passes on to the greater world, becomes renowned in all manly exercises, but keeps his purity unsullied, even in the perfumed chambers of the palace, face to face with the feverish desire of the shameless Phaedra. “He had a marvellous air of discretion about him, as of one never to be caught unaware, as if he never could be anything but like water from the rock, or the wild flowers of the morning, or the beams of the morning star turned to human flesh.” Repulsed and mad with