“Mercury!  Atlas’ smooth-tongued boy, whose will
      First trained to speed our wildest earliest race,
    And gave their rough hewn forms with supple skill
      The gymnast’s grace.

    “’Tis thine the unbodied spirits of the blessed,
      To guide to bliss, and with thy golden rod
    To rule the shades; above, below, caressed
      By every god.”

Mercury, as we have seen, was among the Ancients, only another name for Noah.  “Indeed,” says Dr. Clarke, “some of the representations of Mercury upon ancient vases are actually taken from the scenic exhibitions of the Grecian theatre; and that these exhibitions were also the prototypes whereon D’Hancarville shows Mercury, Momus, and Psyche delineated as we see Harlequin, Columbine, and Clown on our stages.  The old man (Pantaloon), is Charon (the ferryman of hell).  The Clown is Momus, the buffoon of heaven, the god of raillery and wit, and whose large gaping mouth is in imitation of the ancient masks.”

Amongst the Aryans, Medians, Egyptians, Chaldeans, Babylonians, and other nations (including our own, as did not Lilly predict the execution of Charles I., the plague, the great fire of London, and other events) was astrology practised.  The Egyptians peopled the constellation of the Zodiac (the first open book for mankind to read), with Genii, and one of the twelve Zodiacal signs was Aries (the Ram).  The ram is of the same species as the goat, and the god Pan was the Goat god, as we know.  The astrologers, in their divinations and rulings of the planets placed the various parts of the body under a planetary influence.  The head and face were assigned to the house of Aries, and therefore the face notably for the Pantomimic Art was placed by the ancient astrologers under the influence of this particular planet.

The heathen worship of Pan was not only known in Arcadia, but also throughout Greece, although it did not reach Athens until after Marathon.

Of Pan’s death Plutarch tells the story that in the reign of Tiberius, one Thamus, a pilot, visiting the islands of Paxae, was told of this god’s death.  When he reached Palodes he told the news, whereupon loud and great lamentations were heard, as of Nature herself expressing her grief.  The epoch of the story coincides with the enactment of that grim, and the world’s greatest tragedy on the hill of Golgotha, and the end, and the beginning of a new world.  Rabelais, Milton, Schiller, and also Mrs. Browning, have allusions to this story of Plutarch’s.

The ambitious family of the Titans (the bones of the “giants on the earth” before the Deluge, gave rise to the stories of the Titans found in caves), and their scions and coadjutors Jupiter, Juno, Mars, Mercury, Apollo, Diana, Bacchus, Minerva, or Pallas, Ceres, Proserpine, Pluto, and Neptune furnish by far the greatest part of the Mythology of Greece.  Tradition says that they left Phoenicia about the time