L. Nor is it any wonder, Mary; for this is indeed the longest, and the most wildly confused question that reason can deal with; but I will try to give you, quickly, a few clear ideas about the heathen gods, which you may follow out afterwards, as your knowledge increases.

Every heathen conception of deity in which you are likely to be interested, has three distinct characters:—­

I. It has a physical character.  It represents some of the great powers or objects of nature—­sun or moon, or heaven, or the winds, or the sea.  And the fables first related about each deity represent, figuratively, the action or the natural power which it represents; such as the rising and setting of the sun, the tides of the sea, and so on.

II.  It has an ethical character, and represents, in its history, the moral dealings of God with man.  Thus Apollo is first, physically, the sun contending with darkness; but morally, the power of divine life contending with corruption.  Athena is, physically, the air; morally, the breathing of the divine spirit of wisdom.  Neptune is, physically, the sea; morally, the supreme power of agitating passion; and so on.

III.  It has, at last, a personal character; and is realized in the minds of its worshipers as a living spirit, with whom men may speak face to face, as a man speaks to his friend.

Now it is impossible to define exactly, how far, at any period of a national religion, these three ideas are mingled; or how far one prevails over the other.  Each inquirer usually takes up one of these ideas, and pursues it, to the exclusion of the others; no impartial effort seems to have been made to discern the real state of the heathen imagination in its successive phases.  For the question is not at all what a mythological figure meant in its origin; but what it became in each subsequent mental development of the nation inheriting the thought.  Exactly in proportion to the mental and moral insight of any race, its mythological figures mean more to it, and become more real.  An early and savage race means nothing more (because it has nothing more to mean) by its Apollo, than the sun; while a cultivated Greek means every operation of divine intellect and justice.  The Neith, of Egypt, meant, physically, little more than the blue of the air; but the Greek, in a climate of alternate storm and calm, represented the wild fringes of the storm-cloud by the serpents of her aegis; and the lightning and cold of the highest thunderclouds, by the Gorgon on her shield:  while morally, the same types represented to him the mystery and changeful terror of knowledge, as her spear and helm its ruling and defensive power.  And no study can be more interesting, or more useful to you, than that of the different meanings which have been created by great nations, and great poets, out of mythological figures given them, at first, in utter simplicity.  But when we approach them in their third, or personal,