“Woman, the poetry of Nature,” says an elegant writer of the present day, “has ever been the theme of the minstrel, and the idol of the poet’s devotion. The only ideas we entertain of a celestial nature are associated with her; in her praise the world has been exhausted of its beauties, and she is linked with the stars and the glories of the universe, as if, though dwelling in a _lowlier_ sphere, she belonged to a _superior_ world.” This deification of the _female character_ was the true _substance_ of those imaginary _goddesses_, so sadly disfigured by the circumscribed stupidity of Greek and Roman mythologists. _Juno_, _Baaltis_, _Diana_, _Babia_, _Venus_, _Aphrodite_, _Derceto_, _Militta_, _Butsee_, _Semiramis_, _Astarte_, _Io_, _Luna_, _Rimmon_, _Lucina_, _Genitalis_, _Ourania_, _Atargatis_, etc. etc., were all but fictitious and ideal forms, resolving themselves into _one and the same representation_ of that sweetest ornament of the creation, _woman_; and the same terms being applied to the _moon_, with the same _symbolic_ force and the same _typical_ significance, illustrates the aptitude of that _tributary_ quotation, with which this chapter has commenced, and to the beauty of which the heart of every “man that is born of woman” must feelingly respond. Europa itself, now geographically appropriated, as a denomination, to one of the quarters of the globe, was originally synonymous with any of the above-mentioned names; and partook in the acquiescence paid by adoring millions to the all-fascinating object of so refined an allegory. Of all those various epithets, however vitiated by time, or injured by accommodation to different climates and languages, the import--intact and undamaged--is still preserved in the _primitive Irish tongue_, and in that alone; and with the fertility of conception whereby it engendered _all myths_, and kept the human intellect suspended by its _verbal phantasmagoria_, we shall find the _drift_ and the _design_, the _type_ and the _thing typified_, united in the ligature of one _appellative chord_, which to the _enlightened_ and the _few_ presented a chastened yet sublime and microscopic _moral_ delineation; but to the _profane_ and the _many_ was an impenetrable night producing submission the most slavish, and mental prostration the most abject; or, whenever a ray of the _equivoque_ did happen to reach their eyes--perverted, with that propensity which we all have to the depraved, into the most reckless indulgence and the most profligate _licentiousness_.