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 awaiting in magical sleep, or in more than human delight, the summons that shall bid them return to succour their distressed people in the hour of utmost need. As to the personality of these heroes there can be no doubt. Grimm long ago pointed out that the red-bearded king beneath the Kyffhäuser can be no other than Thor, the old Teutonic god of thunder, and that the long beard—sometimes described as white—attributed to other leaders was a token of Woden. The very name of Woden is preserved in the Odenberg, to which several of such legends attach; and the hidden king there is sometimes called Karl the Great, and sometimes Woden. In other countries Quetzalcoatl and Vishnu, we know, are gods of the native cults. Oisin, Merlin, and King Arthur all belong to the old Celtic Pantheon. And if some other sleeping or vanished heroes bear the names of personages who once had a real existence, they are but decked in borrowed plumes. In short, all these Hidden Heroes are gods of the earlier faiths, vanquished by Christianity but not destroyed.

If this be so, it may be inferred that these gods were at one time conceived as presently active, and that it is only since the introduction of the new faith that they have been thought to be retired beneath the overhanging hills or in the Islands of the Blest. But this was not so. In all regions the chief activity of the deities has always been placed in the past. Upon the stories told of the deeds of yesterday the belief of today is founded. Whether it be creation, or strife against evil spirits, or the punishment of men, or the invention of the civilizing arts, or the endless amours of too susceptible divinities, all is looked upon as past and done. The present is a state of rest, of suspension of labour, or at least of cessation of open and visible activity. These gods, like men, require an abode. In the later stages of culture this abode is a Paradise on some more or less imaginary mountain-top, or effectually cut off from men by the