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We believe it very probable that the worship of Thor, Odin, and Frigga, was purely Scandinavian, and penetrated Germany, as far as Switzerland, with the Saxons. Hertha, according to Tacitus, was the supreme goddess of the Germans. She had no place in Scandinavian mythology. Ipsambul, so renowned among the Teutons, was quite unknown in Scandinavia.

In a short time I was honestly and truly ashamed of being a Christian, when I thought of the variegated world of fiction, of the ambiguous Grecian mythology, of those feasts and spectacles, lofty statues, and noble temples: Where then were the deliverer on the ignominious cross, and his impoverished disciples? how this faith of poverty and misfortune dwindled into nothing compared with those sacrifices and public parade, and the jubilee of the Pindaric hymns? neither did I reckon myself among the community, and the dullest day of my young, life, was that on which I was received into the church of our sect with the customary ceremonies.

Werther, 1 vol. Marmontel, 4 vols. English Novels, 40 vols. Le Sage, 10 vols. Prevost, 10 vols. POLITICS AND MORALS. The Old Testament. The New Testament. The Koran. The Vedan. Mythology. Montesquieu. The Esprit des Lois. It will be observed that he classed the books of the religious creeds of nations under the head of "politics."

He lived in a continual glamour of spiritual romance, bathing everything, from the old deities of the Valhalla down to the champions of German liberation, in an ideal glow of purity and nobleness, earnestly Christian throughout, even in his dealings with Northern mythology, for he saw Christ unconsciously shown in Baldur, and Satan in Loki.

It has resolutely held aloof from mythology, academic allegory, historical painting, and from the neo-Greek elements of Classicism as well as from the German and Spanish elements of Romanticism. This reactionary movement is therefore entirely French, and surely if it deserves reproach, the one least deserved is that levelled upon it by the official painters: disobedience to the national spirit.

The Heldenbuch relates the deeds of Theodoric and Attila and the outpouring of the Goths into the Roman Empire. In the Nibelungen-lied the hero is Siegfried, the Achilles of the North, the embodiment of beauty, courage and virtue. The same personages are met with in these German legends, as in the Scandinavian mythology, only in the latter they take on a more godlike form.

These, with a scrupulous adherence to lucky and unlucky days, are the prevailing popular superstitions in the three duchies; a great number of which, especially among the Esthonians, are connected with their ancient mythology.

M. Colbert had amassed four millions of francs, and dispersed them with sleepless economy. He was horrified at the expenses which mythology involved; not a wood nymph, nor a dryad, that cost less than a hundred francs a day! The dress alone amounted to three hundred francs. The expense of powder and sulphur for fireworks amounted, every night, to a hundred thousand francs.

Indeed Navagero always begins by choosing a truly poetical subject, which he then treats, not with servile imitation, but with masterly freedom, in the style of the Anthology, of Ovid, of Catullus, or of the Virgilian eclogues. He makes a sparing use of mythology, only, for instance, to introduce a sketch of country life, in a prayer to Ceres and other rural divinities.

Whence this later tangle came, and how much of it is drawn from other sources, we can hardly hope to explain from the fragments of literature that we have. But strangely there is a parallel which is close enough to suggest that the patchwork is due to popular mythology. In the myths of Phrygia we meet with Atys or Attis, of whom varying legends are told.