Bring me a hundred reeds of decent growth
To make a pipe for my capacious mouth—"
Gay.
The first fruit of the mechanical skill of Vulcan, was invented as a punishment for Juno, to whom, as it was through her he fell from heaven, he attributed his deformity. This was a throne of gold, with secret springs, on which the goddess no sooner sate, than she
found herself unable to move. In vain the Gods attempted to deliver her; with Vulcan, only rested the secret and the power to disenthral her; and as the price of her freedom, Juno promised to procure him a wife from amongst the heavenly conclave. Vulcan fixed his desires on Minerva; the Goddess of Wisdom, however, laughed his suit to scorn, and Vulcan is represented as having been very violent at his rejection.
Juno then pressed the suit of her son on Venus, whose power was already established at the celestial court. The beautiful Goddess rejected him with horror, and Juno overwhelmed her with supplications; but as these could not subdue the ugliness of the suitor, she implored Jupiter to exercise his power; and with all the determination of a Goddess, poured so many entreaties, accompanied with tears, that the king of heaven must have complied, had it not been for the more touching and feminine attributes of Venus, the soft eyes of whom filled with tears, and whose downy cheek grew pale, at the idea of the union.
But Destiny, the irrevocable, interposed, and pronounced the decree by which the most beautiful of the Goddesses, was united to the most unsightly of the Gods. During the festival which followed their union, the altar of Hymen was that which received all the offerings.
A marriage thus assorted, however, was not likely to prove a happy one, and ere long it was followed by a discovery which