ecognized.

Her radiant splendor created her mythological personality, just as the
agility of Mercury created that of the messenger of the gods.

We do not see her aerial chariot in the Heavens drawn by a flight of
doves with white and fluttering wings, but we follow the lustrous orb
led on through space by solar attraction. And in the beautiful evenings
when she is at her greatest distance from our Sun, the whole world
admires this white and dazzling Venus reigning as sovereign over our
twilight[10] for hours after sunset, and in addition to the _savants_
who are practically occupied with astronomy, millions of eyes are raised
to this celestial splendor, and for a moment millions of human beings
feel some curiosity about the mysteries of the Infinite. The brutalities
of daily life would fain petrify our dreams, but thought is not yet
stifled to the point of checking all aspirations after eternal truth,
and when we gaze at the starry sky it is hard not to ask ourselves the
nature of those other worlds, and the place occupied by our own planet
in the vast concert of sidereal harmony.

[Illustration: FIG. 36.--The Evening Star.]

Even through a small telescope, Venus offers remarkable phases.

[Illustration: FIG. 37.--Successive phases of Venus.]

Fig. 37 gives some notion of the succession of these, and of the
planet's variations in magnitude during its journey round the Sun.
Imagine it to be rotating in a year of 224 days, 16 hours, 49 minutes, 8
seconds at a distance of 108 million kilometers (67,000,000 miles), the
Earth being at 149 million kilometers (93,000,000 miles). Like Mercury,
at certain periods it passes between the Sun and ourselves, and as its
illuminated hemisphere is of course turned toward the orb of day, we at
those times perceive only a sharp and very luminous crescent. At such
periods Venus is entirely, so to say, against the Sun, and presents to
us her greatest apparent dimension (Fig. 38). Sometimes, again, like
Mercury, she passes immediately in front of the Sun, forming a perfectly
round black spot; this happened on December 8, 1874, and December 6,
1882; and will recur on June 7, 2004, and June 5, 2012. These transits
have been utilized in celestial geometry in measuring the distance of
the Sun.

You will readily divine that the distance of Venus varies considerably
according to her position in relation to the Earth: when she is between
the Sun and ourselves she is nearest to our world; b