E KEEPS HER REVELS WITH THE DANCING HOURS.

Pope's Homer's Odyssey. B. 12. L. 2.
Pl. 5.]

He was reckoned among the gods presiding over marriage, from the torches
lighted by him to grace that solemnity. It was the custom in several
nations, after gaining a victory, to pile the arms of the enemy in a
heap on the field of battle, and make a sacrifice of them to Vulcan. As
to his worship, Vulcan had an altar in common with Prometheus, who first
invented fire, as did Vulcan the use of it, in making arms and utensils.
His principal temple was in a consecrated grove at the foot of mount
AEtna, in which was a fire continually burning. This temple was guarded
by dogs, which had the discernment to distinguish his votaries by
tearing the vicious, and fawning upon the virtuous.

He was highly honored at Rome. Romulus built him a temple without the
walls of the city, the augurs being of opinion that the god of fire
ought not to be admitted within. But the highest mark of respect paid
him by the Romans was, that those assemblies were kept in his temple
where the most important concerns of the republic were debated, the
Romans thinking they could invoke nothing more sacred to confirm their
treaties and decisions, than the avenging fire of which that god was the
symbol.

This deity, as the god of fire, was represented differently in different
nations: the Egyptians depicted him proceeding from an egg, placed in
the mouth of Jupiter, to denote the radical or natural heat diffused
through all created beings. In ancient gems and medals he is figured as
a lame, deformed and squalid man, with a beard, and hair neglected; half
naked; his habit reaching down to his knee only, and having a round
peaked cap on his head, a hammer in his right hand, and a smith's tongs
in his left, working at the anvil, and usually attended by the Cyclops,
or by some of the gods or goddesses for whom he is employed.

The poets described him as blackened and hardened from the forge, with a
face red and fiery whilst at his work, and tired and heated after it. He
is almost always the subject either of pity or ridicule. In short, the
great celestial deities seem to have admitted Vulcan among them as great
men used to keep buffoons at their tables, to make them laugh, and to be
the butt of the whole company.

If we wish to come at the probable meaning of this fable, we must have
recourse to Egyptian antiquities. The Horus of the Egyptians was the
mos