The Ancient Mysteries.

have flourished among those people . Liberty , of which they were idolatrously fond , could not fail , by leading them to AA'hat was great in the sciences and arts , to exercise those fine faculties which they had received from nature . Whatever had been the religious administration of Greece , undoubtedly the wisdom of Socrates would have excited the admiration of his compatriots ; the eloquent pen of Xenophon aud of Plato would have consigned the precepts of

it posterity , and Aristotle would have astonished the world by the vast extent of his genius . But it is not less certain that religion , being the dejiository of the sciences , first brought the elements of them into Greece , where they were afterwards cultivated with so much success ; and we may have observed that the Mysteries comprehended the principles ancl unfolded the doctrines of a sublime philosophy .

According to Proclus and Jamblichus , Pythagoras had received his notion of the metempsychosis , and that of the purification of the soul , from the hymns of Orpheus , and had learnt , to make use of his own words , tliat the eternal substance of number was the intelligent mind of the universe , of heaven , of the earth , and of mixed beings . Accordingly this philosopher adopted the greater part of the ceremonies in use in the Mysteries , such as the probation ,

the silence , ancl the number of other rigorous observances . He announced his dogmas in obscure terms , and his disciples were prohibited from revealing his doctrine . His school having been dispersed , several sects were formed out of the wreck of it , who all adhered to the same principles differently modified . That which seemed most strictly to conform itself to those principles was the Orphic , or Bachic sect ; so named , because its followers were particularly

attached to the worship of Bacchus , of which Orpheus was the founder . " They subjected the teletes , or perfect , to the observation of practices injoined to the Egyptian priests ; that is to say , that they should live only on fruits and plants , and should abstain from bloody sacrifices ; in this respect they formed a body separated from the rest of the society , and this was what they called the Orphic life . " * They joined themselves afterwards to the new Platonicians , and they found means to substitute their dogmas in the room of the ancient Platonism .

It would be curious to trace all these sects as they sprang from one another , and succeeded each other during the finest ages of Greece . We mi ght observe what they had in common , what was peculiar to each , ancl in what they adhered to the national religion , from which they were always cautious not to deviate too openly ; but as we are obliged to confine ourselves within the bounds prescribed to this work , we shall only remark that of all the sects the Stoics retained the greatest conformitwith the Mysteries . Their doctrine

y , so magnificently described by the greatest painter of antiquity , was precisely that which the Hierophanta unfolded to the initiated iu the sanctuary of Eleusis . The Epicureans , on the contrary , who endeavoured to annihilate the gods by substituting in their stead a blind principle , were regarded as the enemies of religion . Their presence , it was imagined , would profane the sanctity of the Mysteries ; andas we have before relatedthey were in the

, , number of those to whom the herald interdicted the entrance to the temple . If they were not persecuted , it was because iu their writings they were careful to respect these august solemnities . It is needless to repeat that the ancients , iu everything that concerned their deities , gave free scope to the imagination . The poets took advantage of this permission to adorn and embellish their ingenious fictions .

We may add , too , that the philosophers , although obliged to greater circumspection , because they proposed to themselves a nobler and more serious purpose , made the same use of them iu their works ; and as the public worship was an inexhaustible fund of description and imagery for the