FRANCE, HEIR OF ATHENS. 27 
have invented the genealogy of Love, son of Yenns; nor that of 
Minerva, goddess of wisdom, who issues from the brain of Jove, 
already armed to combat error. It would not have been the pub- 
lican orators of our days that would have dared to enrol under the 
banner of the same god — under the ignoble banner of Mercury — 
the lawyer, the merchant, and the robber, as those fable-making 
Greeks, bolder and franker than we are, have not feared to do. 
On my soul and conscience, I tell you, the hunting people that has 
created the mythology — the Greek people — has reared to august 
Truth, the most magnificent temple that the love of mortals has 
ever yet built. And never has austere religion or doctrine of sacri- 
fice formulized the eternal truth in a manner so neat as the pagan 
mythology, nor better characterized the relations of man with 
nature and with God. Hunter and spiritual was that Athenian 
people whom God formerly chose to sow the principles of His law" 
upon the new-born globe — -that Greek people, to whose beneficent 
and imitative genius. the present civilization still pays homage. 
Hunter and spiritual is still the people to whom God has trans- 
mitted the heritage of Athens — the people whose generous sons 
will have sounded, before the end of the nge, over the whole sur- 
face of the earth, the reveille of freemen and the knell of tyrants — 
the people of unity and fraternity — the people of my country, 
whose emancipative genius and glorious name the Harmonian gen- 
erations will bless. 
