"HERCULES WRESTLING WITH DEATH FOR THE BODY OF ALCESTIS,' BY LORD LEIGHTON

Admetus, King of Thessaly, loved Alcestis, daughter of Pelias. After his marriage he fell ill, but the Fates, who had decreed his death, were prevailed upon by Apollo to spare his life on condition that someone would die in his stead. Only his wife, Alcestis, would make the sacrifice. She sickened in secret while Admetus recovered. But Hercules, arriving at the fatal hour, seized Death, and forced him to release his prey. Hence Milton's lines in his "Sonnet on his Deceased Wife":

From the painting by J. W. Waterhouse, in the Manchester Art Gallery.

One of the many beautiful stories associated with Nymphs. Hylas, a beautiful youth, was beloved by Hercules, whom he accompanied, with Jason and his Argonauts, in the quest of the Golden Fleece. Sent to fill a pitcher from a fountain in Mysia, he fascinated the Nymphs, who would not part with him, and he sank in the waters which were their home. Hercules mourned his loss so greatly that he abandoned the Argonauts to seek Hylas, and the Argo sailed without him. But Hylas was not seen again.

The Nine Muses, of whom six are represented here, were goddesses who presided over the liberal arts. Daughters of Jupiter and Mnemosyne (Memory), they dwelt on the summits of Parnassus, Pindus, or Helicon, whose streams and springs were sacred to them, as were also the palm-tree and the laurel. Apollo was their patron and leader. Poets in all ages have invoked the aid of the Muses. The three not here represented are Calliope, who presided over epic poetry, Erato (love poetry), and Urania (astronomy).

Kensington Gardens is a tribute not only to Sir James Barrie's exquisite creation, but to that god of the woods and fields who inspired it. Pan, the son of Mercury and a wood-nymph, has a great place in poetry. His name signifies "all"; hence a temple dedicated to all the gods was called a Pantheon, and a church in which honour is rendered to the famous dead, such as Westminster Abbey, is often called by the same name. Pan himself was a wild and wandering creature of the woods and mountains.

He was goat-footed and horned, flat-nosed and tailed, yet he played wild sweet tunes on his pipes; and thus he figures as a satyr who pursues the Nymphs and Dryads with unholy loveand also as the spirit of the joy of living the life of nature. Milton writes of

Universal Pan,

Knit with the Graces and the Hours in dance,
Led on the eternal Spring.

But Pan was also the dread of all who wandered through a trackless forest or near a gloomy cave. Sudden and unreasonable fear would seize them at the thought of Pan's presence. Hence our word "panic." It is a singular thought that a panic on the Stock Exchange recalls the eerie terrors of darkness felt by Arcadian peasants in ages remoter than any of which history tells.

The allusions to Greek myths, heard on the common tongue, are endless. Cupid's name is as familiar to-day as when the infant god of love was known to all men as the winged son of Venus by Jupiter, though other fathers-Mars and Mercury-are named. Cupid's name is also Eros; from the one we have our word "cupidity," and from the other "erotic." The story of the estrangement and reconciliation of Cupid and Psyche, one of

the most beautiful of the myths, has been referred to in an earlier chapter. It may be regarded as a primitive allegory of the conditions under which men can find immortality.

Psyche's name signifies "a butterfly"-the emblem of the soul's life breaking from mortal bonds. Keats's beautiful "Ode to Psyche" will be recalled. It concludes thus:

Where branched thoughts, new-grown with pleasant pain,
Instead of pines shall murmur in the wind:

Far, far around shall those dark-cluster'd trees

Fledge the wild-ridged mountains steep by steep;

And there by zephyrs, streams, and birds, and bees,
The moss-lain Dryads shall be lull'd to sleep;
And in the midst of this wide quietness

The literature of Cupid is the literature of love. Shakespeare brings him into his plays no fewer than fifty-two times, never more beautifully than in The Midsummer Night's Dream. Oberon speaks to Titania:

That very time I saw, but thou couldst not,
Flying between the cold moon and the earth,
Cupid all arm'd: a certain aim he took

At a fair vestal thronéd by the west,
And loosed his love-shaft smartly from his bow,
As it should pierce a hundred thousand hearts;
But I might see young Cupid's fiery shaft

Quench'd in the chaste beams of the watery moon,
And the imperial votaress passed on,

In maiden meditation, fancy-free.

Yet mark'd I where the bolt of Cupid fell:

It fell upon a little western flower,

Before milk-white, now purple with love's wound,

And maidens call it love-in-idleness.

No better example could be found of the transfusion of an ancient story into fine poetry thousands of years after that story was a wisp of fable in the morning of time.

The reason why these and countless other myths have survived till our day, aiding and beautifying expression, is not merely that poets and painters and scholars have loved them; it is primarily their own everlastingness. They typify human experiences which do not, and cannot, change in essentials; there is no need to go on inventing symbols which, being new, would have little of the beauty of these childlike fancies, and none of their immemorial suggestion. Myth binds the ages together. It may be described as the ozone of literature and art.

It is curious to note how instinctively we resort to fable when new things have to be named or new subjects discussed. In recent years, for example, man has acquired the power of mechanical flight. But his efforts to solve the problem have been beset with peril and tragedy. Hence we now constantly hear allusions to the story of Icarus, just as in an earlier period within our own memory similar allusions to Phaeton were frequent in books and newspapers.

Phaeton's story has a tragic splendour, for its background is the universe itself. He was the son of Apollo (or Phœbus), the god of the Sun, and the nymph Clymene. He has represented