“The greatest pleasure arising to a modern imagination from the ancient Mythology, is in a mingled sense of the old popular belief, and of the philosophical refinements upon it. We take Apollo, and Mercury and Venus, as shapes that existed in popular credulity, as the greater fairies of the ancient world: and we regard them, at the same time, as personifications of all that is beautiful and genial in the forms and tendencies of creation. But the result, coming, as it does too, through avenues of beautiful poetry, both ancient and modern, is so entirely cheerful, that we are apt to think it must have wanted gravity to more believing eyes. […] He is the most ancient of all, for he presided over the elements that composed the universe. […] She is called also the ancient Vesta, to distinguish her from her daughter Vesta, who, with her mother, is also called Cybele.