interest in each other's society, all the world instantly
went about, actuated by a purely charitable sentiment, telling the most
extraordinary falsehoods concerning them that they could devise. Thus it
was the fashion to call at one house and announce that you had detected
the unhappy pair in a private box at the theatre, and immediately to pay
your respects at another mansion and declare that you had observed them
on the very same day, and at the very same hour, in a boat on the river.
At the next visit, the gentleman had been discovered driving her in his
cab; and in the course of the morning the scene of indiscretion was the
Park, where they had been watched walking by moonlight, muffled up in
sables and cashmeres.

This curious process of diffusing information was known in Elysium
under the title of _'being talked about;_' and although the stories thus
disseminated were universally understood to be fictions, the Elysians
ascribed great virtue to the proceeding, maintaining that many an
indiscreet fair one had been providentially alarmed by thus becoming the
subject of universal conversation; that thus many a reputation had
been saved by this charitable slander. There were some malignant
philosophers, indeed, doubtless from that silly love of paradox in all
ages too prevalent, who pretended that all this Elysian morality was one
great delusion, and that this scrupulous anxiety about the conduct of
others arose from a principle, not of _Purity_, but of _Corruption_.
The woman who is 'talked about,' these sages would affirm, is generally
virtuous, and she is only abused because she devotes to one the charms
which all wish to enjoy.

Thus Dido, who is really one of the finest creatures that ever existed,
and who with a majestic beauty combines an heroic soul, has made her
way with difficulty to the Elysian circle, to which her charms and
rank entitle her; while Helen, who, from her very _debut_, has
been surrounded by fifty lovers, and whose intrigues have ever been
notorious, is the very queen of fashion; and all this merely because she
has favoured fifty instead of one, and in the midst of all her scrapes
has contrived to retain the countenance of her husband.

Apropos of Dido, the Queen of Carthage was the person in all Elysium for
whom Proserpine took the greatest liking. Exceedingly beautiful, with
the most generous temper and the softest heart in the world, and blessed
by nature with a graceful simplicity of ma