a halfpenny or pennyworth of nuts is sold. See Buttmann, Lexic. p. 93 sq. 73 "Paradise Lost," i. 44. "Him th' Almighty power Hurl'd headlong flaming from th ethereal sky, With hideous ruin and combustion" 74 The occasion on which Vulcan incurred Jove's displeasure was this--After Hercules, had taken and pillaged Troy, Juno raised a storm, which drove him to the island of Cos, having previously cast Jove into a sleep, to prevent him aiding his son. Jove, in revenge, fastened iron anvils to her feet, and hung her from the sky, and Vulcan, attempting to relieve her, was kicked down from Olympus in the manner described. The allegorists have gone mad in finding deep explanations for this amusing fiction. See Heraclides, 'Ponticus," p. 463 sq., ed Gale. The story is told by Homer himself in Book xv. The Sinthians were a race of robbers, the ancient inhabitants of Lemnos which island was ever after sacred to Vulcan. "Nor was his name unheard or unadored In ancient Greece, and in Ausonian land Men call'd him Mulciber, and how he fell From heaven, they fabled, thrown by angry Jove Sheer o'er the crystal battlements from morn To noon he fell, from noon to dewy eve, A summer's day and with the setting sun Dropp'd from the zenith like a falling star On Lemnos, th' Aegean isle thus they relate." "Paradise Lost," i. 738 75 It is ingeniously observed by Grote, vol i p. 463, that "The gods formed a sort of political community of their own which had its hierarchy, its distribution of ranks and duties, its contentions for power and occasional revolutions, its public meetings in the agora of Olympus, and its multitudinous banquets or festivals." 76 Plato, Rep. iii. p. 437, was so scandalized at this deception of Jupiter's, a