Shall in their sweet recesses nurse my son;

And when his cheeks with youth's first blushes glow, To thee the sacred maids the boy shall show.

"More to instruct thee, when five years shall end, I will again to visit thee descend,

Bringing thy beauteous son to charm thy sight,
Whose godlike form shall fill thee with delight;
Him will I leave thenceforward to thy care,
And will that with him thou to Troy repair ;
There if inquiry shall be made, to know
To whom thou dost so bright an offspring owe,
Be sure thou nothing of the truth detect,
But ready answer make as I direct:

Say of a sylvan nymph the fair youth came,
And Calycopis call his mother's name;

For shouldst thou boast the truth, and madly own
That thou in bliss hadst Cytherea known,
Jove would his anger pour upon thy head,
And with avenging thunder strike thee dead.
Now all is told thee, and just caution given;
Be secret thou, and dread the wrath of heaven."
She said, and sudden soared above his sight,
Cutting through liquid air her heavenward flight.
All hail, bright Cyprian Queen! thee first I praise,
Then to some other power transfer my lays.

HYMN TO CERES.

THE manuscript of the Hymn to Ceres, which, in some parts, is in a very fragmentary state, was discovered in the last century by C. F. Matthæi, in the library of the Holy Synod at Moscow, and communicated by him, together with a few lines of a lost hymn to Bacchus, to David Ruhnken, a professor at the University of Leyden. Ruhnken published it, with critical notes. There has been much diversity of opinion concerning the genuineness of this poem, or, I should rather say, its identity with the Homeric Hymn to Ceres, which certainly existed in the second century, and is often quoted by Pausanias.' The passages cited by Pausanias differ in a slight degree from lines to be found in this poem. Wolf seems to hold this discovered hymn very cheap; but he speaks with reference to its claim to absolute genuineness. Without allowing which, we may certainly consider it in the same point of view as we do the other hymns commonly attributed to Homer; and though it is not equal in vigor and beauty to the three principal hymns before mentioned, it is still a very lively and picturesque poem, smooth and flowing in its language, and curious and peculiar in some of its incidents.

Grote, after giving an analysis of this hymn, says, "It is interesting not less as a picture of the Mater Dolorosa, (in the mouth of an Athenian, Demeter and Persephone were always the Mother and Daughter, by

Attic. 38. Messen. 38. Corinth. 14.

excellence,) first an agonized sufferer, and then finally glorified the weal and woe of men being dependent upon her kindly feeling-than as an illustration of the nature and growth of Grecian legend generally. Though we now read this hymn as pleasing poetry, to the Eleusinians, for whom it was composed, it was genuine and sacred history. They believed in the visit of Demeter to Eleusis, and in the mysteries as a revelation from her, as implicitly as they believed in her existence and power as a goddess."