sleep. When it touched the dying, their souls gently parted from their
mortal frame; and, when it was applied to the dead, the dead returned
to life. Neptune had the attribute of raising and appeasing tempests:
and Vulcan, the artificer of heaven and earth, not only produced the
most exquisite specimens of skill, but also constructed furniture that
was endowed with a self-moving principle, and would present itself for
use or recede at the will of its proprietor. Pluto, in perpetrating
the rape of Proserpine, started up in his chariot through a cleft of
the earth in the vale of Enna in Sicily, and, having seized his prize,
disappeared again by the way that he came.

Ceres, the mother of Proserpine, in her search after her lost daughter,
was received with peculiar hospitality by Celeus, king of Eleusis. She
became desirous of remunerating his liberality by some special favour.
She saw his only child laid in a cradle, and labouring under a fatal
distemper. She took him under her protection. She fed him with milk
from her own breast, and at night covered him with coals of fire.
Under this treatment he not only recovered his strength, but shot up
miraculously into manhood, so that what in other men is the effect of
years, was accomplished in Triptolemus in as many hours. She gave him
for a gift the art of agriculture, so that he is said to have been the
first to teach mankind to sow and to reap corn, and to make bread of
the produce.

Prometheus, one of the race of the giants, was peculiarly distinguished
for his proficiency in the arts. Among other extraordinary productions
he formed a man of clay, of such exquisite workmanship, as to have
wanted nothing but a living soul to cause him to be acknowledged as
the paragon of the world. Minerva beheld the performance of Prometheus
with approbation, and offered him her assistance. She conducted him to