even more frequent than the record of its sober facts. As men advance
in observation and experience, they are compelled more and more to
perceive that all the phenomena of nature are one vast chain of
uninterrupted causes and consequences: but to the eye of uninstructed
ignorance every thing is astonishing, every thing is unexpected. The
remote generations of mankind are in all cases full of prodigies: but
it is the fortune of Greece to have preserved its early adventures, so
as to render the beginning pages of its history one mass of impossible
falsehoods.


DEITIES OF GREECE.

The Gods of the Greeks appear all of them once to have been men. Their
real or supposed adventures therefore make a part of what is recorded
respecting them. Jupiter was born in Crete, and being secreted by his
mother in a cave, was suckled by a goat. Being come to man's estate,
he warred with the giants, one of whom had an hundred hands, and two
others brethren, grew nine inches every month, and, when nine years
old, were fully qualified to engage in all exploits of corporeal
strength. The war was finished, by the giants being overwhelmed with
the thunderbolts of heaven, and buried under mountains.

Minerva was born from the head of her father, without a mother; and
Bacchus, coming into the world after the death of his female parent,
was inclosed in the thigh of Jupiter, and was thus produced at the
proper time in full vigour and strength. Minerva had a shield, in
which was preserved the real head of Medusa, that had the property of
turning every one that looked on it into stone. Bacchus, when a child,
was seized on by pirates with the intention to sell him for a slave: