ed with the Muses, became intimate with
Mercury, kept company with Hymen, and grew in favour with every one
except the implacable Momus. Unfortunately, Cupid became insolent and
vain, behaving with arrogance to the superior powers. He made enmity
reign where peace and concord should have been found. Feuds raged
among the gods and goddesses on his account. To rid themselves of a
pest, the rulers of heaven called an assembly of the gods, to consider
how peace could be restored. Cupid was accused of being a public
incendiary, a disturber of good order; and the fomenter of discord
being found guilty, he was banished from the blest abodes; ordered to
be a retainer of Ceres and Bacchus on earth; and doomed to have his
wings stripped of their feathers, that he might not again infest the
confines of heaven.

Cupid is now armed with two bows, one of which he bends with the aid
of the Graces, to secure a happy smiling lot, and he with the other,
blind-folded, lets fly his arrows, to the confusion and misery of many
in life. Like his mother, he is constantly in want. He is eager,
ravenous, and wandering about bare-footed, without home or habitation,
sleeping before doors or by the wayside, under the open sky. But at
the same time he is ever forming designs upon all that is beautiful,
is forward, cunning, and fond of new tricks.

Fate mysteriously clings round this earth, the heavens, and the
creatures in the regions above and below. When Jupiter heard of the
death of his son Sarpedon, in great grief he called on Mercury to go
instantly to the Fates, and bring from them the strong box in which
the eternal decrees are laid up. Mercury went to the Fatal Sisters,
and delivered his message. The Sisters smiled, and told him that the
other end of the golden chain which secured the box with the
unalterable decrees was so fixed to the throne of Jove, that were it
to be unfastened, the master's seat itself might be shaken.

Jupiter holds in his hands the unerring balance of fate. Close to his
throne stand the two inexhaustible urns--the one filled with good
fortune and happiness, the other with misfortune and misery. Out of
these is mixed a dose of life to every mortal man; and as the draught
is, so are one's days embittered with disasters, or made pleasant with
serenity, ease, and prosperity. To every star is allotted a mind, and
all things have their fixed irrevocable laws. The human nature is
twofold; and man, who lives well on earth,