No doubt the elements of mythology are in all nations the same, consisting of the facts of nature and the facts of life.  The heavens and the earth, day and night, the sun and moon, storms, fire, ocean, and rivers, love and beauty, life and progress, war, wisdom, doom, and chance,—­these, among all nations, supply the material for myths.  But while, with some races, these powers remain solemn abstractions, above and behind nature, among the Greeks they descended into nature and turned to poetry, illuminating all of life.

Let us imagine a Greek, possessed by the spirit of his nation and acquainted with its legendary history, visiting the holy places of that ideal land.  On the northern boundary he sees the towering summit of Olympus, on whose solemn heights reside the twelve great gods of his country.  When the dark clouds roll along its defiles, and the lightning flashes from their black depths, it is Zeus, striking with his thunderbolt some impious offender.  There was held the great council of the Immortals.  When the ocean was quiet, Poseidon had left it to visit Olympus.  There came Hephaestos, quitting his subterranean fires and gloomy laborers, to jest and be jested with, sitting by his beautiful queen.  There, while the sun hung motionless in mid-heaven, Apollo descended from his burning chariot to join the feast.  Artemis and Demeter came from the woods and fields to unite in the high assembly, and war was suspended while Ares made love to the goddess of Beauty.  The Greek looked at Parnassus, “soaring snow-clad through its native sky,” with its Delphic cave and its Castalian fount, or at the neighboring summits of Helicon, where Pegasus struck his hoof and Hippocrene gushed forth, and believed that hidden in these sunny woods might perhaps be found the muses who inspired Herodotus, Homer, Aeschylus, and Pindar.  He could go nowhere without finding some spot over which hung the charm of romantic or tender association.  Within every brook was hidden a Naiad; by the side of every tree lurked a Dryad; if you listen, you may hear the Oreads calling among the mountains; if you come cautiously around that bending hill, you may catch a glimpse of the great Pan himself.  When the moonlight showers filled the forests with a magical light, one might see the untouched Artemis gliding rapidly among the mossy trunks.  Beneath, in the deep abysses of earth, reigned the gloomy Pluto with the sad Persephone, home-sick for the upper air.  By the sea-shore Proteus wound his horn, the Sirens sang their fatal song among the rocks, the Nereids and Oceanides gleamed beneath the green waters, the vast Amphitrite stretched her wide-embracing arms, and Thetis with her water-nymphs lived in their submarine grottos.  When the morning dawned, Eos, or Aurora, went before the chariot of the Sun, dropping flowers upon the earth.  Every breeze which stirred the tree-tops was a god, going on some errand for Aeolus.  The joy of inspired thought was breathed into the