Minerva, Intellectual Power, Practical Reason; Mercury, Executive Power, Understanding; Apollo was Genius, the Sun; Bacchus was Geniality, the Earth’s answer.  “Apollo and Bacchus were contrasted,” says the reporter.  “Margaret unfolded her idea of Bacchus.  His whole life was triumph.  Born from fire; a divine frenzy; the answer of the earth to the sun,—­of the warmth of joy to the light of genius.  He is beautiful, also; not severe in youthful beauty, like Apollo; but exuberant,—­liable to excess.  She spoke of the fables of his destroying Pentheus, &c., and suggested the interpretations.  This Bacchus was found in Scripture.  The Indian Bacchus is glowing; he is the genial apprehensive power; the glow of existence; mere joy.”

Venus was Grecian womanhood, instinctive; Diana, chastity; Mars, Grecian manhood, instinctive.  Venus made the name for a conversation on Beauty, which was extended through four meetings, as it brought in irresistibly the related topics of poetry, genius, and taste.  Neptune was Circumstance; Pluto, the Abyss, the Undeveloped; Pan, the glow and sportiveness and music of Nature; Ceres, the productive power of Nature; Proserpine, the Phenomenon.

Under the head of Venus, in the fifth conversation, the story of Cupid and Psyche was told with fitting beauty, by Margaret; and many fine conjectural interpretations suggested from all parts of the room.  The ninth conversation turned on the distinctive qualities of poetry, discriminating it from the other fine arts.  Rhythm and Imagery, it was agreed, were distinctive.  An episode to dancing, which the conversation took, led Miss Fuller to give the thought that lies at the bottom of different dances.  Of her lively description the following record is preserved:—­

’Gavottes, shawl dances, and all of that kind, are intended merely to exhibit the figure in as many attitudes as possible.  They have no character, and say nothing, except, Look! how graceful I am!

’The minuet is conjugal; but the wedlock is chivalric.  Even so would Amadis wind slow, stately, calm, through the mazes of life, with Oriana, when he had made obeisances enough to win her for a partner.

    ’English, German, Swiss, French, and Spanish dances all
    express the same things, though in very different ways.  Love
    and its life are still the theme.

’In the English country dance, the pair who have chosen one another, submit decorously to the restraints of courtship and frequent separations, cross hands, four go round, down outside, in the most earnest, lively, complacent fashion.  If they join hands to go down the middle, and exhibit their union to all spectators, they part almost as soon as meet, and disdain not to give hands right and left to the most indifferent persons, like marriage in its daily routine.

’In the Swiss, the man pursues, stamping with energy, marking the time by exulting