lancholy respecting the lot of man than ours have been since they could not therefore admit that he was the creature of Jupiter: they were rather prone to believe that Jupiter was from the first his enemy: the same views led them to speak evil of and revile the female sex: Hesiod, who, unless we are to except Homer, is probably the oldest of the Grecian poets, and who has related this story of Prometheus at length, says "that the men are like industrious bees who by their labours procure all the honey, and that the women are the idle drones who fatten upon the good things which their more assiduous fellows have accumulated':" it is impossible not to remark a considerable resemblance between the story of Pandora's box, and that of the apple with which Eve in the Bible tempted her husband, and he did eat.

There is a further story that has been told of Prometheus, which for its strangeness it may seem worth while to relate: some of the first race of mankind proved ungrateful to their former, and gave a perfidious information to Jupiter against him Jupiter rewarded the informers with the gift of immortal life, for all men were hitherto mortal: he packed the gift however upon the back of an ass: the ass had already travelled a long way, and was exceedingly weary, and troubled with a tormenting thirst: he at length came to a river, but a water-serpent guarded the stream, and would not suffer him to drink the wily serpent would yield upon no other terms, than that the ass should surrender to him the invaluable burthen he bore, in exchange for his draught: the ass accepted the bargain:

1 Hesiod. The. 593.

m Nicander, Theriac. 349.

thus the serpent obtained the gift of immortal life, in consequence of which every year he casts his slough, and comes forth as young and vigorous as ever, while the unworthy mortals for whom Jupiter destined it, lost the reward of their treachery.

The story of the creation of man by the hands of Prometheus was not however universally received in the religion of the Greeks: many deeming it more decent and just to ascribe this event to the power of Jupiter.

:

CHAP. XI.

OF THE RURAL DEITIES.

Pan the God of Inanimate Nature-also of Shepherds, Hunters, and Fishermen.-His Figure.-Festival of the Lupercalia.-Curious Origin of his many-reeded Pipe. He is the Author of Panic Fears.-Pales the Goddess of Shepherds.-Flora of Flowers.-Pomona, of Fruits.-Vertumnus the God of Orchards.-Loves of Vertunmus and Pomona.-Priapus the God of Gardens.--Terminus, of Boundaries.-Satyrs, Fauns and Sylvans.-The River Gods.-Story of Alpheus and Arethusa.-The Nymphs.-Naiads, Dryads, Oreads, and Hamadryads.-Story of Echo and Narcissus. The Celestial Nymphs.

HAVING now finished my account of the superior Gods, or inhabitants of mount Olympus, as well as of the other branches of the family, we come next to that beautiful part of the Grecian mythology, which replenished all nature with invisible beings, so that whether these ancients walked in fields or gardens, whether the object before them were a river or a wood, whether they travelled by sea or by land, whether they visited the hospitable habitations of others, or continued under the protection of their own roofs, they felt on all occasions surrounded with the divine nature: and, as these Gods, whatever was their particular province or department, were represented in the Grecian pictures and statues under the most graceful or picturesque