almost a child, her bosom barely showed the change beyond her girlhood. all her charms were budding, but half opened; for i saw not only beauty wondrous in itself, but possibility of more to be in the full process of her blooming days. i gazed upon her, and my heart grew soft, as a parched pasture with the dew of heaven. while thus i gazed, she smiled, and slowly raised the long curve of her lashes; and we looked each upon each in wonder, not alarm, not eye to eye, but soul to soul, we held each other for a moment. all her life seemed centred in the circle of her eyes. she stirred no limb; her long-drawn, equal breath swelled out and ebbed away beneath her breast, in calm unbroken. not a sign of fear touched the faint color on her oval cheek, or pinched the arches of her tender mouth. she took me for a vision, and she lay with her sleeps smile unaltered, as in doubt whether real life had stolen into her dreams, or dreaming stretched into her outer life. i was not graceless to a womans eyes. the girls of damar paused to see me pass, i walking in my rags, yet beautiful. one maiden said, he has a princes air! i am a prince; the air was all my own. so thought the lily on the imams breast; and lightly as a summer mist, that lifts before the morning, so she floated up, without a sound or rustle of a robe, from her coarse pillow, and before me stood with asking eyes. the imam never moved. a stride and blow were all my need, and they were wholly in my power. i took her hand, i held a warning finger to my lips, and whispered in her small expectant ear, adeb, the son of akem! she replied in a low murmur, whose bewildering sound almost lulled wakeful me to sleep, and sealed the sleepers lids in tenfold slumber, prince, lord of the imams life and of my heart, take all thou seest,it is thy right, i know, but spare the imam for thy own souls sake! then i arrayed me in a robe of state, shining with gold and jewels; and i bound in my long turban gems that might have bought the lands twixt babelmandeb and sahan. i girt about me, with a blazing belt, a scimitar oer which the sweating smiths in far damascus hammered for long years, whose hilt and scabbard shot a trembling light from diamonds and rubies. and she smiled, as piece by piece i put the treasures on, to see me look so fair,in pride she smiled. i hung long purses at my side. i scooped, from off a table, figs and dates and rice, and bound them to my girdle in a sack. then over all i flung a snowy cloak, and beckoned to the maiden. so she stole forth like my shadow, past the sleeping wolf who wronged my father, oer the woolly head of the swart eunuch, down the painted court, and by the sentinel who standing slept. strongly against the portal, through my rags, my old, base rags,and through the maidens veil, i pressed my knife,upon the wooden hilt was adeb, son of akem, carved by me in my long slavehood,as a passing sign to wait the imams waking. shadows cast from two high-sailing clouds upon the sand passed not more noiseless than we two, as one, glided beneath the moonlight, till i smelt the fragrance of the stables. as i slid the wide doors open, with a sudden bound uprose the startled horses; but they stood still as the man who in a foreign land hears his strange language, when my desert call, as low and plaintive as the nested doves, fell on their listening ears. from stall to stall, feeling the horses with my groping hands, i crept in darkness; and at length i came upon two sister mares, whose rounded sides, fine muzzles, and small heads, and pointed ears, and foreheads spreading twixt their eyelids wide, long slender tails, thin manes, and coats of silk, told me, that, of the hundred steeds there stalled, my hand was on the treasures. oer and oer i felt their long joints, and down their legs to the cool hoofs;no blemish anywhere: these i led forth and saddled. upon one i set the lily, gathered now for me, my own, henceforth, forever. so we rode across the grass, beside the stony path, until we gained the highway that is lost, leading from sana, in the eastern sands: when, with a cry that both the desert-born knew without hint from whip or goading spur, we dashed into a gallop. far behind in sparks and smoke the dusty highway rose; and ever on the maidens face i saw, when the moon flashed upon it, the strange smile it wore on waking. once i kissed her mouth, when she grew weary, and her strength returned. all through the night we scoured between the hills: the moon went down behind us, and the stars dropped after her; but long before i saw a planet blazing straight against our eyes, the road had softened, and the shadowy hills had flattened out, and i could hear the hiss of sand spurned backward by the flying mares. glory to god! i was at home again! the sun rose on us; far and near i saw the level desert; sky met sand all round. we paused at midday by a palm-crowned well, and ate and slumbered. somewhat, too, was said: the words have slipped my memory. that same eve we rode sedately through a hamoum camp, i, adeb, prince amongst them, and my bride. and ever since amongst them i have ridden, a head and shoulders taller than the best; and ever since my days have been of gold, my nights have been of silver.god is just! eleusinia.[a] [footnote a: see number xxiii., september, 1859.] the saviours of greece. life, in its central idea, is an entire and eternal solitude. yet each individual nature so repeatsand is itself repeated inevery other, that there is insured the possibility both of a world-revelation in the soul, and of a self-incarnation in the world; so that every mans life, like agrippas mirror, reflects the universe, and the universe is made the embodiment of his life,is made to beat with a human pulse. we do all, therefore,hindu, egyptian, greek, or saxon,claim kinship both with the earth and the heavens: with the sense of sorrow we kneel upon the earth, with the sense of hope we look into the heavens. the two presences of the eleusinia,the earthly demeter,[b] the embodiment of human sorrow, and the heavenly dionysus,[c] the incarnation of human hope,these are the two great presences of the universe; about whom, as separate centres,the one of measureless wanderings, the other of triumphant rest,we marshal, both in the interpretations of reason and in the constructions of our imagination, all that is visible or that is invisible,whatsoever is palpable in sense or possible in idea, in the world which is or the world to come. incarnations of the life within us, in its two developments of sorrow and hope,they are also the centres through which this life develops itself in the world: it is through them that all things have their genesis from the human heart, and through them, therefore, that all things are unveiled to us. [footnote b: demeter is [greek gae-mhaetaer], mother earth.] [footnote c: the same as iacchus and the latin bacchus.] but these two presences have their highest interest and significance as _foci_ of the religious development of the race: and inasmuch as all growth is ultimately a religious one, it is in this phase that their organic connections with life are widest and most profound. as such they appear in the eleusinia; and in all mythology they furnish the only possible key for the interpretation of its mystic symbolism, its hieroglyphic records, and its ill-defined traditions. accordingly we find that all mythology naturally and inevitably flows about these centres into two distinct developments, which are indicated, 1