This is the failure, the central loss, over which Achtheia mourns.  Happy are the epoptae who know this, who have looked the Sphinx in the face, and escaped death!  They are the seers, they the heroes!

But “Conx Ompax!”

And now, like good Grecians, let us make the double libation to our lady,—­toward the East and toward the West.  That is an important point, reader; for thus is recognized the intimate connection which our lady has with the movements of Nature, in which her life is mirrored,—­ especially with the rising, the ongoing, and the waning of the day; and you remember that this also was the relief of the Sphinx’s riddle,—­this same movement from the rising to the setting sun.  But prominently, as in all worship, are our eyes turned toward the East,—­toward the resurrection.  In the tomb of Memnon, at Thebes, are wrought two series of paintings; in the one, through successive stages, the sun is represented in his course from the East to the West,—­and in the other is represented, through various stages, his return to the Orient.  It was to this Orient that the old king looked, awaiting his regeneration.

Thus, reader, in all nations,—­by no mere superstition, but by a glorious symbolism of Faith,—­do the children of the earth lay them down in their last sleep with their faces to the East.

[2] The worship of this Great Mother is not more wonderful for its antiquity in time than for its prevalence as regards space.  To the Hindu she was the Lady Isani.  She was the Ceres of Roman mythology, the Cybele of Phrygia and Lydia, and the Disa of the North.  According to Tacitus, (Germania, c. 9,) she was worshipped by the ancient Suevi.  She was worshipped by the Muscovite, and representations of her are found upon the sacred drums of the Laplanders.  She swayed the ancient world, from its southeast corner in India to Scandinavia in the northwest; and everywhere she is the “Mater Dolorosa.”  And who is it, reader, that in the Christian world struggles for life and power under the name of the Holy Virgin, and through the sad features of the Madonna?

[3] Iliad, I. 63.

[4] Euripides.

[5] Archilochus.

[6] This function of Mercury, as Psycho-Pompos, or conductor of departed souls to Hades, is often misunderstood.  He was a Pompos not so much for the safety of the dead (though that was an important consideration) as for the peace of the living.  The Greeks had an overwhelming fear of the dead, as is evident from the propitiatory rites to their shades; hence the necessity of putting them under strict charge,—­even against their will. (Horace, I. Ode xxiv. 15.) All Mercury’s qualifications point to this office, by which he defends the living against the invasions of the dead.  Hence his craft and agility;—­for who so fleet and subtle as a ghost?

[7] Plato’s Republic, at the close.

THE MINISTER’S WOOING.