But it is of no
consequence whether one conception was, or was not, in this case, derived
from the other; my object is only to mark the essential difference
between them.
26. Without following that higher clue, I will pass to the lovely group
of myths connected with the birth of Hermes on the Greek mountains. You
know that the valley of Sparta is one of the noblest mountain ravines in
the world, and that the western flank of it is formed by an unbroken
chain of crags, forty miles long, rising, opposite Sparta, to a height of
8,000 feet, and known as the chain of Taygetus. Now, the nymph from whom
that mountain ridge is named was the mother of Lacedaemon; therefore the
mythic ancestress of the Spartan race. She is the nymph Taygeta, and one
of the seven stars of spring; one of those Pleiades of whom is the
question to Job,--"Canst thou bind the sweet influences of Pleiades, or
loose the bands of Orion?" "The sweet influences of Pleiades," of the
stars of spring,--nowhere sweeter than among the pine-clad slopes of the
hills of Sparta and Arcadia, when he snows of their higher summits,
beneath the sunshine of April, fell into fountains, and rose into clouds;
and in every ravine was a newly awakened voice of waters,--soft increase
of whisper among its sacred stones; and on every crag its forming and
fading veil of radiant cloud; temple above temple, of the divine marble
that no tool can pollute, nor ruin undermine.
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