beholds; and she at length exclaims:)

Tullia.—I begin to fear that the moderns really do surpass the ancients; on this point I came to satisfy myself, and doubt not I shall have to carry back a melancholy report to my father.

Duke.—Console yourself, madam, no man amongst us equals your illustrious sire; neither does any come near Caesar, with whom you were contemporary, nor the Scipios who preceded him. Nature, it is true creates, even at this day, powerful intellects, but they resemble rare seeds, which cannot arrive at maturity in an uncongenial soil. The simile does not hold good respecting arts and sciences; time, and fortunate chances, have perfected them. It would, for example, be easier for us to produce a Sophocles, or an Euripides, than such individuals as your father, because, theatres we have, but no tribunals for public harangues.⁶ You have hissed the tragedy of Cataline; when you shall see Phaedrus played, you will probably agree that the part of Phaedrus, in Racine, is infinitely superior to the model you have known in Euripides. I hope, also, that you will agree our Molière surpasses your Terence. By your permission, I shall have the honour of escorting you to the opera, where you will be astonished to hear song in parts; that again is an art unknown to you.⁷ Here, madam, is a small telescope, have the goodness to apply your eye to this glass, and look at that house which is a league off.

Tullia.—Immortal gods! the house is now at the end of the telescope, and appears much larger than before.

Duke.—Well, madam, it is by means of such a toy that we have discovered new heavens, even as by means of a needle, we have become acquainted with a new earth. Do you see this other varnished instrument, in which is inserted a small glass tube? by this trifle, we are enabled to discover the just proportion of the weight of the atmosphere. After much error and uncertainty, there arose a man who discovered the first principle of nature, the cause of weight, and who has demonstrated that the stars weigh upon the earth, and the earth upon the stars. He has also unthreaded the light of the sun, as ladies unthread a tissue of gold.

Tullia.—What, sir, is it to unthread?

Duke.—Madam, the equivalent of this term will scarcely be found in the orations of Cicero. It is to unweave a stuff, to draw out thread by thread, so as to separate the gold. Thus has Newton done by the rays of the sun, the stars also have submitted to him; and one Locke has accomplished as much by the Human Understanding.

Tullia.—You know a great deal for a duke and a peer of the realm; you seem to me more learned than that literary man who wished me to think his verses good, and you are far more polite.

Duke.—Madam, I have been better brought up; but as to my knowledge it is merely commonplace. Young people now, when they quit school, know much more than all the philosophers of antiquity. It is only a pity that we have, in Europe, substituted half-a-dozen imperfect jargons, for the fine Latin language, of which your father made so noble a use; but with such rude implements we have produced, even in the belles lettres, some very fair works.

Tullia.—The nations who succeeded the Romans must needs have lived in a state of profound peace, and have enjoyed a constant succession of great men, from my father's time until now, to have invented so many new arts, and to have become acquainted so intimately with heaven and earth.

Duke.—By no means, madam, we are ourselves, some of those barbarians, who almost all came from Scythia, and destroyed your empire, and the arts and sciences. We lived for seven or eight centuries like savages, and to complete our barbarism, were inundated with a race of men termed monks, who brutified, in Europe, that human species which you had conquered and enlightened. But what will most astonish you is, that in the latter ages of ignorance amongst these very monks, these very enemies to civilization, nature nurtured some useful men. Some invented the art of assisting the feeble sight of age; and others, by pounding together nitre and charcoal, have furnished us with implements of war, with which we might have exterminated the Scipios, Alexander, Caesar, the Macedonian phalanxes, and all your legions; it is not that we possess warriors more formidable than the Scipios, Alexander, and Caesar, but that we have superior arms.⁸

Tullia.—In you, I perceive united, the high breeding of a nobleman, and the erudition of a man of (literary) consideration; you would have been worthy of becoming a Roman senator.

Duke.—Ah, madam, far more worthy are you of being at the head of our court.

Mad. de P.—In which case, this lady would prove a formidable rival to me.

Tullia.—Consult your beautiful mirrors made of sand, and you will perceive you have nothing to fear from me. Well, sir, in the gentlest manner in the world, you have informed me that your knowledge (infinitely) transcends our own.

Duke.—I said, madam, that the latter ages are better informed than those which preceded them; at least no general revolution has utterly destroyed all the monuments of antiquity: we have had horrible, but temporary convulsions, and amid these storms, have been fortunate enough to preserve the works of your father, and of some other great men: thus, the sacred fire has never been utterly extinguished, and has in the end produced an almost universal illumination. We despise the barbarous scholastic systems, which have long had some influence among us, but revere Cicero and all the ancients who have taught us to think. If we possess other laws of physics than those of your times, we have no other rules of eloquence, and this perhaps may settle the dispute between the ancients and moderns.

(Every one agreed with the duke. Finally they went to the opera of Castor and Pollux, with the words and music of which, Tullia was much gratified, and she acknowledged such a spectacle to be extremely superior to that of a combat of gladiators.⁹)

Great Marlow, Bucks.

M.L.B.

NEW BOOKS.

THE YEAR OF WATERLOO.

[In continuation of our extracts from the very amusing Private Correspondence of a Woman of Fashion are the following incidents of this memorable era.]

Return of Napoleon.—At half-past nine o'clock the secretary announced to us that Napoleon had entered Paris quietly, without pageantry or mark of splendid triumph, and was seated at supper in the vacated palace of Louis XVIII!—

Thus did the French people permit his