This beautiful planet may be seen either a little after sunset or
shortly before sunrise, according as it becomes the morning or the
evening star, but never departing quite forty-eight degrees from the
Sun. Its day is about twenty-five minutes shorter than ours; its year
seven and a half months or thirty-two weeks. The diameter of Venus is
7,700 miles, and she receives from the Sun thrice as much light and heat
as the Earth.
An old Dutchman named Schroeter spent more than ten years in
observations on this planet, and finally discovered a mountain on it
twenty-two miles in height, but he never could discover anything on the
mountain, not even a mouse, and finally died about as wise as when he
commenced his studies.
Venus, in Mythology, was a Goddess of singular beauty, who became the
wife of Vulcan, the blacksmith, and, we regret to add, behaved in the
most immoral manner after her marriage. The celebrated case of Vulcan
_vs._ Mars, and the consequent scandal, is probably still fresh in the
minds of our readers. By a large portion of society, however, she was
considered an ill-used and persecuted lady, against whose high tone of
morals and strictly virtuous conduct not a shadow of suspicion could be
cast; Vulcan, by the same parties, was considered a horrid brute, and
they all agreed that it served him right when he lost his case and had
to pay the costs of court. Venus still remains the Goddess of Beauty,
and not a few of her _protégés_ may be found in California.