in their endeavour to body forth-at least in marblethe conception of the human form without fault or flaw. And how did they proceed? They took all the best features of face, and all the best mould of limb, and brought them together and wrought them into one harmonious whole, to represent the nearest approach they could make to the proper form of man. And they, too, were right. The true idea of man perfect in form and faculty is the best to be found in any man, or in the whole of mankind. We will therefore, for the occasion, imagine that the glorious Apollo is, in outward make, the nearest approach possible to the embodiment of a perfect man, and therefore the likest we can get to that of the first man--the divine idea embodied. It is perhaps the best we can now obtain, and will at least express the might of man's mind in empowering the hand of man. The setting sun is mingling his glory with the clouds of heaven, and together they throw a roseate glow of life upon the pure white statue of that sun-god, which we accept as the best image left us of bodily man, a being endowed with capacity to fulfil his intelligence in corporeal action. We cannot separate the body from the expression of the ruling soul. The shaft from that bow has pierced the writhing Python, which we fancy, but cannot see; and on that face and in that attitude a will is visible that conflicts with evil but to conquer it. Here we see the man who carved Apollo, a man who had a will to vanquish the grand serpent. He has made that archer's eye follow the arrow to the Python's heart.

But a real living man will do as well, or better, for our purpose of determining man's present place in creation-for living men find and fill their places, which are not precisely beside the conscienceless baboons. All men meet a Python in their path. We have reason, therefore, for looking at Apollo. He was the Greek idea of a perfect man, the divine man, at war with evil to subdue it. And in tracing up the derivation of the idea expressed in the character and exploits of Apollo, we discover the connexion with Osiris and Horus, the Egyptian myths, which again point back to some earlier symbolism in which the restoration of humanity was promised by the God-man of woman born-born to die and live again—who should win eternal life for all men, in virtue of his conquest of the serpent, the symbol of deception and of death. Apollo, the conqueror of the serpent, was son of the supreme God by a human mother, and sent to earth to keep the sheep of Admetus, in which name we see a trace of Adam. Hercules was reckoned as twin-born with Apollo, and his attributes are indeed but another form of the Restorer, who combats evils, and yet dies by the venom of the serpent he had conquered. The same idea runs back in the Assyrian, Chaldean, and Indian astronomy and mythology, just as it pervades the stories of the twelve chief gods of Greece and Rome; being found also in the twelve signs of the Zodiac and their decans; alike in the zodiacs of Dendera and Esné as in the still more ancient zodiacs of Hindostan; thus indicating by their agreement the existence of an intelligence anterior to

either from which all the symbolic embodiments of the first prophecy-the prophecy of man's triumph over evil -were derived. That prophecy is either true or else the invention of man's mind, as containing a promise the fulfilment of which shall fulfil man's desire and his hope. That desire and hope must then be natural to man—given him, in fact, by his Maker. Therefore, the philosophy that would account for man's existence must be a false philosophy, if the existence of that prophecy, promise, or hope be not taken into the account and itself accounted for.

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CHAPTER II.

THE HUMAN BODY.

HERE, then, stands an embodied man. Can we infer his origin from his present appearance? He is unclothed, or covered only with feeling, and self-balanced in uprightness; all parts of his body, nerved by will, marvellously consent to preserve that position against a force that constantly tends to drag them to the ground. He has a centre in himself. The upper limbs stand out in symmetrical ease and freedom beside the lifeorgans as if ever ready to protect them. Here are real perfect hands, never employed pronely for progression, but completely adapted to the use and purpose of a high intelligence, a will conjoined with reason. Here, too, are perfect feet, conformed to the rational soul equally with the hands. Such is the general impression: let us observe more particularly.

See, first, how the majesty of mind sits enthroned on that brow, and speaks its power in every feature of that face. There is no true face and index of mind but the human. It is formed and moulded to be moved by the emotions of the man, and it presents under their

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influence a living picture of the heart in such a manner as to awaken other hearts to a fellowship with the feeling it embodies. Face answers face like a mirror. Sympathetically responding to the spirit breathing in the looks of friendship and love, the face expresses a language beyond words; and thus man learns the depth of many meanings which the soul no otherwise could We watch the play of thought upon the face, as of a spirit breathing on the waters, as of a light that animates its every movement, and makes it as plastic to the moving spirit as matter is to life. What eye but man's speaks thought, or looks into another's eye for the touch of intelligence, feeling, and desire? When with kindled heart, and fascinated with the resplendent and respondent face of our cordial friend, lit up and glorified with the light of love and intellect, and beaming with good-will, we feel what is meant by the human face divine,' and own before that look no dim relationship with meaner beings that possess neither means nor mind for any fellowship with spirit. An ape may grin but he cannot smile, and laughter is unknown except with reason: that alone is conscious of the true, the ludicrous, the ridiculous, the incongruous, the comical, the witty.

Need we anatomise the brain of our friend to settle any question in our mind as to how far the organ, through which his will is impressed and his thought operates, corresponds in its measure and proportions with that of apes and monkeys? Must we dissect his cerebrum and cerebellum, and take the dimensions of