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.

    [3] Crebillon, author of Catalina.

    [4] Groseilles, literally; gooseberries or currents; but we have
        taken the liberty here, and elsewhere, slightly to deviate from
        the original text, in compliment to English customs, tastes,
        idioms, &c.

    [5] Russia:  whose Empress, Catherine II, is intended by the
        succeeding sentence.

    [6] The well-known poetic vanity of Voltaire must be taken into
        full account, when he thus talks of the easiness of producing
        a (modern) Sophocles, or an Euripides; perhaps he thought his
        own tragedies equal, or superior to theirs; and for what follows,
        the French national prejudice in favour of their own dramatic
        writers, and which is far more laudable than the English
        indifference to the interests of the drama, should be recollected.

    [7] To “astonished” the author might almost have added alarmed, or
        disgusted.  The conversant in music, know that song in parts, i.e.
        harmonized, is peculiarly distasteful to the ear unaccustomed to
        it; song, in unison, is the natural music of savage man;