Venusia

“ While ablect fear prevailed among the multitudes of humanity, and while scientists were engaged in eager speculation as to the nature of the Venusians, the rays employed by them, and the manner in which their spheres had been propelled through space and held in suspension above the earth, a number of new flashes were perceived on Venus by the vigilant astronomers of Colorado and Spain. ”

“ They would seem to us to narrow and become at the same time less salient as they advanced. This is just what their spoke-like character shows. Thus the peculiar look of the Venusian markings proves to be in exact keeping with what the conditions demand, and by so doing bears testimony that those conditions actually exist.
Not less strange on its face and equally interesting for its disclosure is another phenomenon connected with the planet which also has been deemed incredible—the exceeding brightness of Venus's disk. ”

“ Neuration of fore-wing of Chloroclystis bilineolata. (Imago, Plate VI., figs. 9-10.) 20. Neuration of hind-wing of ditto. 21. Neuration of fore-wing of Tatosoma agrionata. (Imago, Plate VI., figs. 26-27.) 22. Neuration of hind-wing of male. 23. Neuration of hind-wing of female. 24. Head of ditto. 25. Neuration of fore-wing of Venusia undosata. (Imago, Plate VI., figs. 33-34.) 26. Neuration of hind-wing of ditto. 27. Neuration of fore-wing of Paradetis porphyrias. (Imago, Plate VI., fig. 36.) 28. Neuration of hind-wing of male. 30. Neuration of fore-wing of Asthena pulchraria. ”

“ Venus. Hot ’un! You speak in enigmas? You are fully aware why I come hither?
Alph. I don’t. You are the statue out of them gardens, ain’t you?
Venus. I am no statue—I am Venus, I tell you! I have lain in a long, long trance, how long I know not, in my own palace in the Isle of Cyprus. How long I should have lain in that trance I know not had it not been for thou, most lovely mortal!
Alph. (Aside.) She knows me.
Venus. Yes; it was the touch of your kind mortal hand that has given me power to animate this marble shell!
Alph. (Aside.) She says she’s a shell. ”

“ As I am about to turn aside into one of the green walks I see Venus sitting before me on a stone bench, not the beautiful woman of marble, but the goddess of love herself with warm blood and throbbing pulses. She has actually come to life for me, like the statue that began to breathe for her creator. Indeed, the miracle is only half completed. Her white hair seems still to be of stone, and her white gown shimmers like moonlight, or is it satin? ”

“ Venus. But, where is that fearful youth who slew my doves? Bring him forth!
Alph. I can’t bring him fourth or fifth. He was not talking about a dove; he was talking about a ballet girl. And now, missus, to come to the point, now you’ve seen me doing my daily business you’ve thought better of it, ain’t you?
Venus. Better; aye, far better! They sit at your bidding, and you make them sit in silence while you bend over their faces with yonder sharp little instrument, and you threaten their bare throats! You are indeed a king of mortals, and I love you even more! I would do anything for thee! ”

“ VENUS, an old Roman and Latin goddess, apparently representing beauty and growth in nature, and especially in gardens, where the Roman practical sense would most naturally see these. She had two temples in Rome, one in the grove of Libitina, with whom she was wrongly identified, and the other near the Circus Maximus, both of which had as their dedication day the 19th of August, the festival of the Visalia rustica, a fact which also points in the direction of skilled cultivation as the human work of which she was protectress. ”

“ Even the light of the full moon silvering the tree tops does not exercise greater enchantment over the mind of the contemplative observer. In either of her rôles, as morning or as evening star, Venus has no rival. No fixed star can for an instant bear comparison with her. What she lacks in vivacity of light—none of the planets twinkles, as do all of the true stars—is more than compensated by the imposing size of [Pg 49] her gleaming disk and the striking beauty of her clear lamplike rays. ”

“ Ans. She was educated and adorned by the Horæ or Hours, who carried her to heaven as soon she became of age. All the gods were astonished at the beauty of Venus, and many demanded her in marriage; but Jupiter betrothed her to Vulcan, an ugly and deformed divinity.
Ques. How is Venus represented?
Ans. Sometimes as a young virgin rising from the sea, or riding on the waves in a shell, while Cupids, Nereids and Dolphins are sporting around her—again, she is pictured as traversing the heavens in an ivory chariot drawn by doves. ”

“ We spent an hour there, but, except that her divine beauty filled and satisfied my eye, as nothing else ever did, and that the statue is as unlike a thing to the casts one sees of it as one thing could well be unlike another, I made no criticism. There is an atmosphere of fame and circumstantial interest about the Venus, which bewilders the fancy almost as much as her loveliness does the eye. She has been gazed upon and admired by troops of pilgrims, each of whom it were worth half a life to have met at her pedestal. ”

“ A little further along the path of evolution, in the Atlantean epoch, the Lords of Venus and the Lords of Mercury came to the earth for the purpose of giving a further impulse to the mental and emotional development. It was the task of Venus to combat the lower emotions and raise the brutish animal passion of Mars to the softer and more beautiful Venus-love, She was to add beauty to strength, and to attain that ideal the Lords of Venus fostered the plastic arts, painting and sculpture, these were not taught men of the general public at that time ”

“ Venus. Boozed! Is he a god?
Alph. Not quite; though sometimes it is a spirit.
Venus. Come, Alphonzo—come, join me in my [Pg 7] aerial flight to the regions far beyond these lowly worlds!
Alph. You’ll excuse—I can’t, I’ve made other arrangements. I am already engaged! I’ve got a girl!
Venus. I remember a bright-eyed mortal in the gardens. Is she your love?
Alph. Yes.
Venus. She must die! I myself will crush her!
Alph. (Aside.) I must drop Jane a postcard. (Aloud.) What do you want to crush her for?
Venus. Because she is in my path! And shall any mortal maid stand between you and I? ”

“ Again she wandered on and on, helpless and despairing, till one of the servants of Venus met her and knew her. Seizing Psyche by the hair, she dragged her into the presence of the terribly beautiful goddess, who broke into a laugh of cruel triumph when she found her rival in her power. Venus delivered her over to her torturers, Anguish and Sorrow. They, having scourged and tormented her, brought her again before Venus, who flew at her like a fury, as if she would tear her limb from limb.
“You ugly slave!” said Venus, as soon as she recovered breath; “you want a lover, do you? ”

“ This day was generally known as Vinalia Priora, as distinguished from the Vinalia Rustica of August 19. Both days were believed to be sacred to Venus [291] ; the earlier one, according to Ovid, was the foundation-day of the temple of Venus Erycina, with which he connected the legend of Aeneas and Mezentius. But as both Varro and Verrius are agreed that the days were sacred, not to Venus but to Jupiter [292] , we may leave the legend alone and content ourselves with asking how Venus came into the connexion. ”

“ The transit of Venus, in 1874, occurs after an interval of one hundred and five and a half years.
Venus, being the second planet from the sun, and the larger of the two inferior planets having their orbits within that of the earth, appears to the earth the most luminous of all the planetary stars, her light at the period of her greatest splendor being so intense as to cast a shadow. She is seen in her full orbit beauty in regions under the equator at the period of her greatest elongation. ”

“ Others say that Venus sprang from the foam of the sea. The zephyr wafted her along the waves to the Isle of Cyprus, where she was received and attired by the Seasons, and then led to the assembly of the gods. All were charmed with her beauty, and each one demanded her for his wife. Jupiter gave her to Vulcan, in gratitude for the service he had rendered in forging thunderbolts. So the most beautiful of the goddesses became the wife of the most ill-favored of gods. Venus possessed an embroidered girdle called Cestus, which had the power of inspiring love. ”

“ TALES OF A BRAVE ULYSSES Artists (astrologers never lie) are birthed when Venus is rising-- not against cat's whelp (eye of newt, tongue of frog) calamitous mist or London fog; far, ferny forbidding fenn. When Venus rises, yes dons Botticelli's cloak or was it her hair gathered in tresses long by lovely handfuls parading it all on a patty shell --her twin oysters ambrosia a Ulyssean mirroring winedark sea, purpling color of a robin's egg. Artists are born in something of Venus . ”

“ And as Venus glowed with increasing splendor in the serene evenings of June, she continued to be mistaken for some petty artificial light instead of the magnificent world that she was, sparkling out there in the sunshine like a globe of burnished silver. Yet Venus as an evening star is not so rare a phenomenon that people of intelligence should be surprised at it. ”

“ While these clouds render the planet surprisingly lustrous to our eyes, they must, of course, keep the globe beneath them most of the time in shadow. It is a source of keen regret that the surface of Venus can not be seen as clearly as that of Mars, for, a priori, there is rather more reason to regard Venus as possibly an inhabited world than any other of the Earth's sister planets, not excepting Mars. ”

“ We do not say that there is any caprice in the movements of Venus, as known to those who diligently consult their almanacs. The movements of the lovely planet are there prescribed with a prosaic detail hardly in harmony with the character usually ascribed to the Goddess of Love. But to those who do not devote particular attention to the stars, the very unexpectedness of its appearance is one of its greatest charms. Venus has not been noticed, not been thought of, for many months. ”

“ THE PLANET VENUS.—Camille Flammarion Revolving round the sun in 224 days, Venus has its motion combined with ours in such a manner that it passes its inferior conjunction, between the sun and us, every 584 days; but the plane in which it revolves is inclined 3° 23′ to that in which the earth itself moves. When Venus attains its greatest elongations from the sun it shines in the west in the evening, then in the morning in the east, with a splendid brightness which eclipses that of all the stars. It is, without comparison, the most magnificent star of our sky. ”

“ As a telescopic object Venus is exceedingly attractive, even when considered merely from the point of view of simple beauty. Both Mercury and Venus, as they travel about the sun, exhibit phases like those of the moon, but Venus, being much larger and much nearer to the earth than Mercury, shows her successive phases more effectively, and when she shines as a thin crescent in the morning or evening twilight, only a very slight magnifying power is required to show the sickle form of her disk. ”

“ She is just as whole as when she left the hands of the sculptor. I am glad to have seen this Venus, and to have found her so tender and so chaste. On the wall of the room, and to be taken in at the same glance, is a painted Venus by Titian, reclining on a couch, naked and lustful.
The room of the Venus seems to be the treasure-place of the whole Uffizi Palace, containing more pictures by famous masters than are to be found in all the rest of the gallery. There were several by Raphael, and the room was crowded with the easels of artists. ”

“ People had ceased to worship Venus, and in revenge she began to do everything she could to injure them. Instead of pure affection which makes the heart glad, she sent a baser love which is only selfish and which brings jealousy and quarrels and heart-aches in its train. And Venus herself, from being a goddess, became a witch. She went to dwell in a deep cavern within a mountain in Germany which came to be called the Venusberg. Here she would lie in wait for men whom she would enchant and keep imprisoned within the mountain forever. ”

“ March 18th.—I went to the sculpture-gallery of the Capitol yesterday, and saw, among other things, the Venus in her secret cabinet. This was my second view of her: the first time, I greatly admired her; now, she made no very favorable impression. There are twenty Venuses whom I like as well, or better. On the whole, she is a heavy, clumsy, unintellectual, and commonplace figure; at all events, not in good looks to-day. Marble beauties seem to suffer the same occasional eclipses as those of flesh and blood. ”

“ It has brought Venus as a world to the deathly pass we have contemplated together. Starting merely as a brake upon her rotation, it has ended by destroying all those physical conditions which enable our own world to be what it is. Night and day, summer and winter, heat and cold, are vital vicissitudes unknown now upon our sister orb. There nothing changes while the centuries pass. An eternity of deadly deathlessness is Venus's statuesque lot. ”

“ It were endless to enumerate the variety of attitudes in which Venus is represented on antique gems and medals; sometimes she is clothed in purple, glittering with diamonds, her head crowned with myrtle intermixed with roses, and drawn in her car of ivory by swans, doves, or sparrows: at other times she is represented standing with the Graces attending her, and in all positions Cupid is her companion. In general she has one of the prettiest, as Minerva has sometimes one of the handsomest faces that can be conceived. ”