The Queen of the Air | Page 2

us
more than yet they have taught.
This first day of May, 1869, I am writing where my work was begun
thirty-five years ago, within sight of the snows of the higher Alps. In
that half of the permitted life of man, I have seen strange evil brought
upon every scene that I best loved, or tried to make beloved by others.
The light which once flushed those pale summits with its rose at dawn,
and purple at sunset, is now umbered and faint; the air which once
inlaid the clefts of all their golden crags with azure is now defiled with
languid coils of smoke, belched from worse than volcanic fires; their
very glacier waves are ebbing, and their snows fading, as if hell had
breathed on them; the waters that once sank at their feet into crystalline
rest are now dimmed and foul, from deep to deep, and shore to shore.
These are no careless words--they are accurately, horribly, true. I know
what the Swiss lakes were; no pool of Alpine fountain at its source was
clearer. This morning, on the Lake of Geneva, at half a mile from the

beach, I could scarcely see my oar-blade a fathom deep.
The light, the air, the waters, all defiled! How of the earth itself? Take
this one fact for type of honour done by the modern Swiss to the earth
of his native land. There used to be a little rock at the end of the avenue
by the port of Neuchâtel; there, the last marble of the foot of Jura,
sloping to the blue water, and (at this time of year) covered with bright
pink tufts of Saponaria. I went, three days since, to gather a blossom at
the place. The goodly native rock and its flowers were covered with the
dust and refuse of the town; but, in the middle of the avenue, was a
newly-constructed artificial rockery, with a fountain twisted through a
spinning spout, and an inscription on one of its loose-tumbled stones,--
"Aux Botanistes, Le club Jurassique,"
Ah, masters of modern science, give me back my Athena out of your
vials, and seal, if it may be, once more, Asmodeus therein. You have
divided the elements, and united them; enslaved them upon the earth,
and discerned them in the stars. Teach us now, but this of them, which
is all that man need know,--that the Air is given to him for his life; and
the Rain to his thirst, and for his baptism; and the Fire for warmth; and
the Sun for sight; and the Earth for his Meat--and his Rest.
VEVAY, May 1, 1869.

THE QUEEN OF THE AIR.

I.
ATHENA CHALINITIS.* (Athena in the Heavens.)
* "Athena the Restrainer." The name is given to her as having helped
Bellerophon to bridle Pegasus, the flying cloud.
LECTURE ON THE GREEK MYTHS OF STORM, GIVEN
(PARTLY) IN UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, LONDON, MARCH 9,
1869.
1. I will not ask your pardon for endeavoring to interest you in the
subject of Greek Mythology; but I must ask your permission to
approach it in a temper differing from that in which it is frequently
treated. We cannot justly interpret the religion of any people, unless we
are prepared to admit that we ourselves, as well as they, are liable to
error in matters of faith; and that the convictions of others, however
singular, may in some points have been well founded, while our own,

however reasonable, may be in some particulars mistaken. You must
forgive me, therefore, for not always distinctively calling the creeds of
the past "superstition," and the creeds of the present day "religion;" as
well as for assuming that a faith now confessed may sometimes be
superficial, and that a faith long forgotten may once have been sincere.
It is the task of the Divine to condemn the errors of antiquity, and of the
philologists to account for them; I will only pray you to read, with
patience, and human sympathy, the thoughts of men who lived without
blame in a darkness they could not dispel; and to remember that,
whatever charge of folly may justly attach to the saying, "There is no
God," the folly is prouder, deeper, and less pardonable, in saying,
"There is no God but for me."
2. A myth, in its simplest definition, is a story with a meaning attached
to it other than it seems to have at first; and the fact that it has such a
meaning is generally marked by some of its circumstances being
extraordinary, or, in the common use of the word, unnatural. Thus if I
tell you that Hercules killed a water-serpent in the lake of Lerna, and if
I mean, and you understand, nothing more than that fact, the story,
whether true