The Poets Herds. 273 



Time passed, and then came the days of sacrificial honour 

 and of temple worship, 



" The pontiff knife 

 Gleams in the sun, the milk-white heifer lows, 

 The pipes go shrilly, the libation flows." 



In the melancholy honour of the sacrifice cattle have 

 been always conspicuous, and in nearly all countries. 

 Among the Hebrews they were selected for the purposes 

 of the altar "without blemish," and were conscientiously 

 consumed to ashes. Among the Spartans the leanest 

 specimens were specially chosen, and the gods put off with 

 only the entrails, the attendants of the shrine eating the 

 meat. Even the Athenians made believe that the deities 

 preferred the smoke of the sacrifice to the flesh. It was a 

 convenient credulity, for while Olympus sniffed, the popu- 

 lace feasted. Hecatombs were therefore vastly popular in 

 Greece. The pagans of Africa at the present day piously 

 economise in their burnt-offerings much in the same way, 

 for though they sacrifice a beast in honour of Aunt Sally — 

 as one feels irreverently inclined to call their idols — they 

 eat it themselves. But they are very careful to give the 

 medicine-man some of the teeth, to put inside his rattle. 

 None the less, consecration was an honour, and the horned 

 folk have in their day suffered from a surfeit of it. The poets 

 prefer to see the heifer at the altar — 



" Who are these coming to the sacrifice ? 

 To what green altar, O mysterious priest, > 



Lead'st thou that heifer lowing at the skies, | 



And all her silken flanks with garlands drest?" 



Yet as a rule it was a bull or bullock — in Egypt alwaj 

 Yet Cowley has — 



" With less complaint the Zoan temples sound, 

 Wlien the adored heifer's drowned, 

 And no true marked successor to be found." 



S 



