Efforts to deify the beautiful existed among the Hindoos and Hebrews, as well as among the Greeks; but in the former races, a wish to blend in one expression a great variety of theological ideas obliterated elegance, and rendered the idols of Egypt and India elaborate metaphysical enigmas, a sculptured library of symbols, instead of an attractive gallery of religious art. But in Greece, the development of sacred imagery fell into the hands of masters in whom the character of priest was subordinate to that of artist; from the servant art became the mistress, the teacher, even the institutor of the religion in whose aid she had been employed, and the works so produced were received as fresh revelations from heaven. Poets gave a local habitation to the gods, and were the first teachers of religion. With the eye of taste, and impelled by sentimental reverence, they people the hills and groves, glens and rivers, with imaginary beings. Much of the Homeric theology is of Egyptian parentage, but in his hands all borrowed material was greatly improved. Mere personification of natural powers became moral agents; and, instead of being represented under disgusting images, they became models of human beauty, elegance, and majesty. The inspired bards, though blind without, were full of eyes within, and Acteon-like, gazed on nature's naked loveliness through the light of their illumined souls. To these poet-priests of nature, like Orpheus, or Eumolpus, was ascribed the first religious establishment, as well as the first practical compositions. The commencement of literature was not a scheme contrived to win the savage to civilization: it was the wild and spontaneous outburst of religious enthusiasm. If powerful institutions are always ascribed to distinguished men only, it is simply because that the full light of common thoughts is never condensed and vividly set forth but by that exalted order of genius which is the rarest of gifts. Minds of the finest tone express the most comprehensive doctrines, as the lyre of Orpheus, and the pipe of Silenus, sung how heaven and earth rose out of chaos. Atlas taught respecting men and beasts, tempestuous elements, and the eclipses and irregularities of the heavenly bodies. The laws of Menu, like those of Moses, begin with cosmogony; and Niebuhr has shown that the history of the Etruscans, like that of the Brahmins and Chaldeans, is contained in an astronomico-theological outline embracing the whole course of time.