Thus the earth became peopled with new inhabitants-a race of men formed for labour; robust, bold, stout, and bearing strong indications of their hardy origin.

Observations.-In the Medici Gallery at Florence is a painting by Le Minga, which represents Deucalion and Pyrrha at the foot of a mountain. They are covered with long veils, and casting stones over their shoulders, which appear to be gradually transforming into men and women.

Notes.-1 Parnassus. The highest mountain of Phocis, a country of Greece, of which the capital was the celebrated city of Delphi. The top of Mount Parnassus rises into two peaks, one of which was consecrated to Bacchus, the god of wine, the other to Apollo and the muses. Between these peaks is the famous fountain of Castalia, whose waters were supposed to endow those who drank of them with the glowing spirit of poetic inspiration. The ancients believed that Parnassus stood exactly in the middle of the earth,

which they imagined to be a vast extended plane of a

circular form,

Whose battlements look o'er into the vale

Of non-existence—Nothing's strange abode.

YOUNG.

2 Oracle. The oracle was the most august and the most religious species of prediction known to the ancient Pagans. The priests taking advantage of the foolish and inordinate desire of men to know what should befall them in future, encouraged their inquiries on this subject, and on certain occasions enjoined them as a sort of religious duty. The oracle, or answer to these inquiries, was in many cases pronounced by the priests themselves, and in others, delivered by statues, trunks of trees, and other inanimate objects, the unconscious instruments of sacerdotal fraud and imposture. The invention and establishment of oracles proved a source of incalculable riches to the priesthood, as the devout inquirer always came charged with offerings of a value proportionate to his wealth or his credulity.

PYTHON SLAIN BY APOLLO.

THE humidity and slime which the waters of the deluge had left on the earth being heated by the action of the sun, very soon engendered my riads of insects and other animals, many of which had been till then unknown. Among the variety of monsters thus produced was the enormous serpent Python, whose unwieldy bulk is said to have covered several acres of ground.

This huge animal was employed by Juno as an agent or instrument of vindictive jealousy and persecution against Latona, one of the favourites of Jupiter. The indignant queen of Olympus engaged the earth to refuse Latona a place where she might repose secure from the attacks of this monster. But Neptune, compassionating her misfortunes, transformed her into a quail, and she flew off to Delos, an island in the Egean sea,

which he had caused to rise from the bottom of the ocean on purpose to receive her. In this island she was restored to her natural form, and bécame the mother of two beautiful twin-children, Apollo' and Diana.

Apollo soon began to amuse himself by shooting the fleet and timid animals of the woods; an exercise by which he became uncommonly expert in the use of the bow; and growing proud of his skill and prowess, he determined to avenge the persecutions and sufferings of his mother by attacking the terrible Python. In this daring and perilous attempt his quiver was entirely exhausted, but the innumerable arrows it had contained were not without effect. The dragon expired, covered with wounds, from which issued streams of blood and venom.

The skin of this extraordinary serpent being preserved, was afterwards used as a covering for the sacred tripod of the Pythia," the priestess of the oracle of Delphi.

In order that time might never be able to efface the remembrance of this glorious achievement, Apollo instituted certain festivals and exercises, called the Pythian Games. These were celebrated every fifth year, and the champion who proved vic

torious in the various exercises of running, wrestling, &c. received a garland formed of oak, palm, or beech leaves, as the reward of his courage and address. The laurel was not then in use. Apollo was yet far from suspecting how dear to him its verdant foliage would one day become. The wreath that bound his temples was gathered with careless hand from the various trees of the forest without choice or preference.

Observations.-There scarcely exists in any country a museum or gallery of the fine arts that does not contain one or more statues of Apollo; and the paintings exhibiting this celebrated divinity are so numerous, that a list of them would fill a volume. Few of these works of art can be mentioned here. At the head of these few must stand a figure which is pronounced by connoisseurs and artists to be the finest statue in the world; this is an Apollo Pythias which adorns the Vatican Palace at Rome. It is called the Apollo of Belvedere, which is the name of a court of the palace, surrounded by an Ionic colonnade, and commanding a fine prospect. This sublime statue occupies one of the niches, and near it is another piece of antique sculpture, scarcely less wonderful in de