.ESCULAPIUS. 529 



make. The staff* is the emblem of assistance and help; 

 the profession standing steadfastly as a support or prop to 

 tottering man, giving eyes to the blind, limbs to the lame, 

 and saving the weary foot-sore traveler from fainting on 

 the journey of life. With the other hand he rests upon the 

 head of a dragon (serpent.) This shadows forth with artistic 

 precision and beauty the triumphs of the art of healing. 

 This serpent is a type of the prudence and wisdom which 

 control the demon of disease and pain, fallen man's most 

 fearful foe. The hand of ^Esculapius rests upon its head, 

 thus typifying his godlike sphere, even the full and perfect 

 control of the powers which so fatally environ man in his 

 strange imprisonment in the body, and his struggles with 

 the elements of darkness and death. 



Contemplate the singular analogies, poetic justice, and 

 propriety of the myth, in the detailed opotheosis of this di- 

 vinity. The gloomy god of Tartarus was dissatisfied with the 

 labors of this shining conservator of humanity, fearing that 

 from his cures and resurrections hell was not being filled fast 

 enough, and he must suffer the fate of all the gods who havo 

 perished for others, and, by a divine self-sacrifice, a splendid 

 murder, through the jealousy of the highest divinities of 

 Olympus, and the envy and hatred of the miserable superin- 

 tendent of the infernal regions, be killed by a " flash of light- 

 ning and placed among the stars." 



And by his side lay a dog. In the symbolical representa- 

 tion of things among all nations, the dog is the emblem of 

 fidelity. Thus the deity who presides over the well-being 

 of humanity, true to the law of love and fidelity, has by his 

 side a dog. Let the earth fail, and the perishing man be 

 hunted to the brink of the grave, with all terrestrial rela- 

 tionships crumbling to nothing about him, yet will he find by 

 his side, sure and steadfast in his hour of agony and suffering, 

 the Physician, his hope in life, his consolation in death. 



Waiving the poetries and symbolisms, what has the regu- 



* Life-preserver. 

 45 



