f)/4 The Turaee and Outer Mountains of Kumaoon. [June, 



vestigators into the nature of mythology seem now agreed that the 

 legend of Ceres, and Proserpine " gathered by gloomy Dis," is to be 

 explained by the history of Seed-corn from the time it is buried in the 

 earth to harvest : those who " plucked the heart of the mystery," were 

 not perhaps aware that Proserpina is good Sanscrit (prusurpun) for 

 the "sprouting," or germination of corn : Burns has done unconscious 

 justice to the allegory so understood in his spirited Ballad of " John 

 Barley corn." By such clues we come to reject the Miltonic but puerile 

 doctrine that the deities of the nations are so many " real essences," 

 intelligent, but generally malevolent ; to replace it by the conclusion, 

 drawn from a multitude of converging proofs, that they are none other 

 than the powers and operations of nature deified in the struggling 

 infancy of agriculture and society. As such, the adoration still paid 

 them, if useless, is at all events harmless : and viewed in the light of 

 reason, their worship, personified as idols, is by no means so different 

 from our own as to justify the outcries which resound from the oracles 

 of Exeter Hall, ever ready to judge another man's servant. For, says 

 Locke, man being the measure of all things, can only form an idea of 

 the incomprehensible divinity, by enlarging towards infinity, as best he 

 may, the qualities and powers, which by sensation and reflection, he 

 perceives to exist in himself. He allows, in degree, the same attributes, 

 to the angels, &c. ; but in neither case can his ideas surpass in number 

 and variety the qualities which he experiences in his own mind. And 

 then the English metaphysician and man of sense, goes on to conclude 

 that the First Being " it is certain, is infinitely more remote, in the 

 real excellency of his nature, from the highest and perfectest of all 

 created beings, than the greatest man, nay purest seraph, is from the 

 most contemptible part of matter ; and consequently must infinitely 

 exceed what our narrow understandings can conceive of him." It 

 appears, then, that whether the object be the abstract conception and 

 work of our minds, and their image, or that of our bodies and the 

 work of our hands, it must infinitely fall short of the truth ; and that 

 neither party can consistently upbraid the other with its mean concep- 

 tions of the divine nature. In this view, also, the Brahman is justified 

 in his tenet that Bruhm is identical with his own mind. The argument 

 might, by those concerned, be turned to good account against the 

 Mohammedans, bv showing that their idea of Alia is not so utterly 



