art of the hymn to Ceres, attributed to Homer, is
occupied with a narrative of her labors to endow the young
Demophoon, mortal child of Metaneira, with immortality. Now, Ceres
was the goddess of the Mysteries; and the last part of this very
hymn recounts how Persephone was snatched from the light of life
into Hades and restored again. Thus we see that the implications
of the indirect evidence, the leanings and guidings of all the
incidental clews now left us to the real aim and purport of the
Mysteries, combine to assure us that their chief teaching was a
doctrine of a future life in which there should be rewards and
punishments. All this we shall more fully establish, both by
direct proofs and by collateral supports.

It is a well known fact, intimately connected with the different
religions of Greece and Asia Minor, that during the time of
harvest in the autumn, and again at the season of sowing in the
spring, the shepherds, the vintagers, and the people in general,
were accustomed to observe certain sacred festivals, the autumnal
sad, the vernal joyous. These undoubtedly grew out of the deep
sympathy between man and nature over the decay and disappearance,
the revival and return, of vegetation. When the hot season had
withered the verdure of the

4 Scene iii.

5 Lib. x. cap. xxxi.

6 Phadon, sect. xxxviii.

7 Leg., lib. ix. cap. x.

8 De Leg., lib. ii. cap. xiv.

9 St. John, Hellenes, ch. xi.

10 Sentences of Stobaus, Sermo CXIX.

fields, plaintive songs were sung, their wild melancholy notes and
snatches borne abroad by the breeze and their echoes dying at last
in the distance. In every instance, these mournful strains were
the annual lamentation of the people over the death of some
mythical boy of extraordinary beauty and promise, who, in the
flower of youth, was suddenly drowned, or torn in pieces by wild
beasts, "Some Hyacinthine boy, for whom Morn well might break and April
bloom."

Among the Argives it was Linus. With the Arcadians it was
Scephrus. In Phrygia it was Lityerses. On the shore of the Black
Sea it was Bormus. In the country of the Bithynians it was Hylas.
At Pelusium it was Maneros. And in Syria it was Adonis. The
untimely death of these beautiful boys, carried off in their
morning of life, was yearly bewailed, their names re echoing over
the plains, the fountains, and among the hills. It is obvious that
these cannot have been real persons whose death excited a sympathy
so general