52 PROLEGOMENON. 



clearly a \vake when the dews of evening or morning are 

 on the grass. Filled with the loveliness of groves and the 

 beauty of rural haunts, to utter the melodies of his heart 

 he had to invent the shepherd's flute, and, being in his soul 

 musical, performed upon it to perfection himself. As the 

 favored lover of the nymph Echo, and permitted the honor 

 of instructing Apollo in the art of divination, he must have 

 possessed transcendent attractions: else how could he 

 have become the sire of lynx, " the symbol of passionate 

 and restless love," also deemed worthy of respect among 

 the supernals? else why the teacher of a great god of 

 Olympus in an art so important as prophecy ? 



Decidedly exquisite and charming he must be, then, with 

 his " horns, beard, puck-nose, tail, goat's feet, and covering 

 of hair," notwithstanding his own mother did flee from 

 him with disgust and horror at his birth. The nymphs 

 cared for him, nursed, and brought him up, which perhaps 

 accounts for the fact of the nymphs liking such fellows 

 ever since. Pan is good to the nymphs: they were very 

 good to him. The fir-tree (hemlock) is sacred to him ; for 

 reasons, ask "Pitys," the beautiful and beloved, whose 

 spirit still sadly breathes through its boughs the moan of a 

 suffocated, desolate, and broken heart. They say he is 

 sensual and voluptuous, given much to dancing and revelry. 

 Evidence, this, of health and soundness, no derangements 

 local or general, acute or chronic, no tuberculous deposits, 

 gouts, dyspepsias, or neuralgias, having the immortal vigor 

 of the woods in his bones and in his blood, still the vitality 

 of the crystalline air of Arcadia. A proper son of Uranus 

 and Ge, (Heaven and Earth,) with the boundless self-suffi- 

 ciency of health and strength, he could well afford to live 

 in forests and be the god of shepherds and huntsmen. 



Weary of the degeneracy of his ancient habitations, 

 where the haunts of divinities, "mid ruins old," are 

 changed into poultry-roosts and shambles for the flesh of 

 dogs, and a peculiar gout is given to the fat of turkeys by 



