AURORA

In the ancient Mythology, the godde of the morning. She was the daughter of Tilan and Terra, and was deified as the light which precedes the rising of the sun above our hemisphere. So lovely a being as she was represented to be could not fail to attract a host of ad mirers; and, accordingly, we find her engaged in numerous amours. But the object of her peculiar favour was Tithonus, son of Laomedon, king of" Troy, for whom she cherished so permanent an attachment as to obtain for him the gift of immortality. She unfortunately neglected, however,to combine this privilege with an immunity from age; and in the course of time Tithonus became pid that Aurora out of pity transformed him into a gra hopper,in which shape he still retained the garrulity of old age. She is supposed generally to rise from the couch of Tithonus:— Et jam prima novo sparge bat lumine terras, Tithom croceum llnqueoa Aurora cubile. — Vir«. Milton, in a pa age teeming with poetic imagery and truth, thus opens the fifth book of Paradise Lost:— Now Morn, her rosy steps in th' eastern clime Advancing, sowed the earth with orient pearl; When Adam wak.d. so customed, for his si ep "Was aery, light, from pure digestion bred And temperate vapours bland, which th' only EOUnd Of leaves and fuming rills, Aurora's fan, Lightly dispersed, am 1 the shrill matin song Of birds on every bough. [s. 122]