FANCY. ENCHANTED BEAUTY. A MYTH. THE mythologies in which the faiths, philosophies and fancies of the world have taken form, have such truth and use in them that they endure, under corresponding changes, through the reformations of creed and modifications of ceremony which mark the history of natural religion throughout all ages and countries. The essential unity of the race, its kindred constitution of mind and affections, its likeness of instincts, passions and aspirations, naturally account for the under-lying agreement in principles and central similarity of beliefs, which are traceable clean through, from the earliest to the most modern, and from the most polished and elabor ate eastern, to the rudest northern, opinions. The nice transitions of doctrine from the infancy to the maturity of faith and philosophy, are marked by an answering variance in their significant ceremonials; but, however mingled and marred, the inevitable truth is imbedded in all the forms of fable, and, under an invariable law of mind, the inspirations of fancy correspond in essentials to the oracles of revelation; just because human nature is one, and its relations to all truth are fixed and universal. Creeds and formulæ, like the geological crusts of the earth, at once retain and record the, revolutions, disintegrations, intrusions and submersions from which they result. In the long succession of epochs, whole continents have risen from the deep, and the vestiges of the most ancient ocean are found upon the modern mountain tops; promontories have been slowly washed away by the ceaseless waves, and new islands have shot up from the ever-heaving sea. Through the more recent crusts the primitive formations frequently crop out upon the surface of the present, and the comparatively modern, in turn, is often found fossilized beneath the most ancient; dislocated fragments are encountered at every step, and icebergs from the severer latitudes are found floating far into the tropical seas. Nevertheless, through all changes of system, revolution has been ever in the same round of celestial influences and relations, and the alterations of form and structure have been only so many different mixtures of unchanging elements, from the simple primitives to the rich composite moulds, into which the waters, winds and sun-light have, in the lapse of ages, modified them. The constancy of essential principles, through all mutations of systematic dogmas, is strikingly manifested. The law of adaptation links the material globe and the rational race, which occupies it, in intimate relations; and the universal unity in the great scheme of being establishes such correspondences of organisms and processes with ideas and ends, that the symbolisms of poetry and mythology are really well based in the truth of nature, and the essential harmonies of all things are with equal truth, under various forms, embraced by fiction and fact, fable and faith, superstition and enlightened reason. "The true light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world;" "the grace that hath appeared unto all men ;" and "the invisible things of the Creator, clearly seen and understood by the things which are made," are propositions which have the formal warrant of our sacred books to back the authority of rational demonstration. Moreover, it is pleasant and profitable to believe that "He hath not left himself without a witness" among any of the tribes of men. The human brotherhood is so involved in the divine fatherhood, that the individual's hold on the Infinite and Eternal must stand or fall with the universality of His regards and providence. If Canaan had been without a "Prophet of the Most High," if Chaldea had been left without soothsayer and seer, and classic Greece and Rome destitute of oracles and Sibylline revelations, the Jewish theology and the Christian apocalypse would stand unsupported by "the analogy of faith," and our highest hopes would be shifted from the broad basis of an impartial benevolence, to a narrow caprice of the "Father of all Men." But, happily, the sympathies of nature, the deductions of reason, and the teachings of the Book, are harmonious on this point, for we find Melchisedec, who could claim no legal or lineal relation to the Levitical priesthood, the chosen type of the perpetual "High Priest of our profession ;" and Balaam, notwithstanding his heathen birth and ministry among the Canaanites when their cup of iniquity was full; and the eastern Magi, who brought their gifts from afar among the Gentiles to the new-born "King of the Jews," all alike guided by the same light, and partakers and fellow-laborers in the same faith with the regular hierarchy of Mount Zion. So, the Star of Jacob is the "desire of nations," and the heart and hope of the wide world turn ever toward the same essential truth, and strive after it by the same instinct through a thousand forms, "if haply they may find it." The religious system of the Jews and Chaldeans agreed, with wonderful exactness, in the doctrine of angelic beings, and their interposition in the affairs of men. The superintendence of the destinies of nations and individuals, and the allotment of provinces, kingdoms and families among these ministering spirits, are as distinctly taught in the book of Daniel of the Old Testament, and in the gospel of St. Matthew of the New, as in the popular beliefs of the Arabians and Persians; indeed, the Bible sanction is general, particular and ample, for the doctrine of angelic ministry, as it has been held in all ages and throughout the world. The order and organization of these celestial beings, among whom the infinite multiplicity of providential offices is thus distributed, falling within the domain of marvellousness and ideality, of course, took the thousand hues and shapes which these prismatic faculties would bestow; and in the various accommodations and special applications of the doctrine, it naturally grew complicated, obscure, and sometimes even incoherent; but in all the confusion of a hundred tongues, kindreds and climates, a substantial conformity to a common standard is apparent enough to prove the identity of origin and the fundamental truth common to them all. It is to introduce one of these remarkable correspondences that these reflections are employed. Fairy tales, it is said by encyclopedists, were brought from Arabia into France in the twelfth century; but this can only mean that that was the epoch of the exotic legends. In England, if they were not indigenous, they certainly were naturalized centuries before Chaucer flourished; and they were as familiar as the catechism, and almost as orthodox, when Spenser wrote his Fairy Queen, and Shakspeare employed their agency in his most exquisite dramas. But their date is, in fact, coeval with tradition, and earlier than all written records; and their origin is without any neces sary locality, for they spring spontaneously from faith in the supernatural. They are inseparable from poetry. That priesthood of nature, which enters for us the presence of the invisible, and converses familiarly with the omnipresent life of the creation, recognizes the administration of an ethereal hierarchy in all the phenomena of existence; they serve to impersonate the spiritual forces, which are felt in all heroic action, and they graduate the responsive sympathies of Heaven to all the supernatural necessities of humanity. The live soul can make nothing dead; it can take no relation to insensate matter; it invests the universe with a conscious life, answering to its own; and an infinite multitude of intermediate spirits stand to its conceptions for the springs of the universal movement. Rank upon rank, in spiral ascent, the varied ministry towers from earth to heaven, answering to every need, supporting every hope, and environing the whole life of the individual and the race with an adjusted providence, complete and adequate. In the great scale, place and office are assigned for spirits celestial, ethereal and terrestrial, in almost infinite gradation. The highest religious sentiments, the noblest styles of intellect and of imagination, and the lower and coarser apprehensions of nature's agencies, are all met and indulged by the accommodating facility of the system. The race of Peris, of Persia, and Fairies, of western Europe, hold a very near and familiar relation to the every-day life of humanity, by their large intermixture of human characteristics and the close resemblance and alliance of their probationary existence and ultimate destiny to the life and fortunes of men. A commonplace connection with ordinary affairs and household interests constitutes the largest part of the popular notion of them; and their interferences among the vulgar are almost absurd and ludicrous enough |