Deep conversation with any river readily interprets to us that venerable mythus which connects Eden with the four rivers of the world; as if water must flow where man is chiefly blest.

Or is he a mythus,ancient word for "humbug," Such as Livy told about the wolf that wetnursed Romulus and Remus? Was he born of woman, this alleged De Sauty? Or a living product of galvanic action, Like the acarus bred in Crosse's flint-solution? Speak, thou Cyano-Rhinal!

This mythus of Michelangelo's passion for the Marchioness of Pescara has blossomed and brought forth fruit abundantly from a single and pathetic passage in Condivi.

If in such cases a legend has been formed and recorded, the student will advance further toward comprehending the spirit of his subject by patiently considering what he knows to be in part perhaps a mythus, than by starting with the foregone conclusion that the legend must of necessity be worthless, and that his cunning will suffice to supply the missing clue.

The legend of the painter who kept his model on a cross in order that he might the more minutely represent the agonies of death by crucifixion, is but a mythus of the realistic method carried to its logical extremity.

A Greek or a Roman would have rejected this picture as false to the mythus of Mars and Venus; and whether Botticelli wished to be less descriptive than emblematic, might be fairly questioned.

The legend of Marsyas and the mythus of the Fall are companion pictures.

They have made her a goddess, those great painters; they have produced a mythus, and personified in native loveliness that bride of the sea, their love, their lady.

What may be called the mythus of the Sistine Chapel has at last been finally disproved, partly by the personal observations of Mr. Heath Wilson, and partly by the publication of Michael Angelo's correspondence.

It is true that to the Roman poets of the Augustan period we owe the conception of the golden age, but it remained with them rather a philosophical mythus than the dream of an idyllic poet.

It is elaborately discussed by Professor F. Knuffmann in a learned monograph, Balder, Mythus und Sage (Strasburg, 1902).

Fr. Kauffmann, Balder, Mythus und Sage, pp.