Page:Afterglow; pastels of Greek Egypt, 69 B.C. (IA afterglowpastels00buck).pdf/13

Rh rituals, which are known to us as Greek Plays. Paganism, in its pure and uncorrupted state was, evidently, a good deal more than an elegant and poetic Bank Holiday, a perpetual riot, a rosy debauch. It had its austere side; perhaps it was, in its essence, as austere as New England in the seventeenth century; though, to be sure, it wore its robes with a better grace and had somewhat a different set of taboos and commands. The descendants of the Pilgrim Fathers hanged witches; the Athenians judged the men who profaned or divulged the holy Mysteries of Eleusis to be worthy of death.

Such then was Paganism in the days of its covenant; something more than a bedecked and fleshy revel. But in the time of its dissolution, I have no doubt that it had taken on some semblance of our popular notion of it.