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[Footnote 1: Readers not quite at home in Mrs. Tighe or Apuleius may be glad to revive their memories of the ancient Psyche by this note from the Cyclopedia. The prettiest rendering of that story is in William Morris's "Earthly Paradise"; but the reader will ask himself seriously whether it be anything but an allegory to cover the moral in the matter-of-fact tale before him.
Psyche, whose two elder sisters were of moderate beauty, was so lovely that she was taken for Venus herself, and men dared only to adore her as a goddess, not to love her. This excited the jealousy of Venus, who, to revenge herself, ordered Cupid to inspire her with love for some contemptible wretch. But Cupid fell in love with her himself. Meanwhile her father, desiring to see his daughter married, consulted the oracle of Apollo, which commanded that Psyche should be conveyed, with funeral rites, to the summit of a mountain, and there left, for she was destined to be the bride of a destructive monster, in the form of a dragon, feared by gods and men. With sorrow was the oracle obeyed, and Psyche was left alone on the desert rock, when suddenly Zephyr hovers around her, gently raises and transports her to a beautiful palace of the God of Love, who visits her every night, unseen and unknown, leaving her at the approach of day.