animal decay--of the phosphorus
contained in them.

This theory was warmly complimented by Ptolemy, who, however, after much
thought and research, decided that he could not accept it as final. His
own theory was that the Milky Way was an emigration of lightning bugs;
and he supported and reinforced this theorem by the well-known fact that
the locusts do like that in Egypt.

Giordano Bruno also was outspoken in his praises of Leverrier's
important contribution to astronomical science, and was at first
inclined to regard it as conclusive; but later, conceiving it to be
erroneous, he pronounced against it, and advanced the hypothesis that
the Milky Way was a detachment or corps of stars which became arrested
and held in 'suspenso suspensorum' by refraction of gravitation while on
the march to join their several constellations; a proposition for which
he was afterwards burned at the stake in Jacksonville, Illinois.

These were all brilliant and picturesque theories, and each was received
with enthusiasm by the scientific world; but when a New England farmer,
who was not a thinker, but only a plain sort of person who tried to
account for large facts in simple ways, came out with the opinion that
the Milky Way was just common, ordinary stars, and was put where it was
because God "wanted to hev it so," the admirable idea fell perfectly
flat.

As a literary artist, M. Bourget is as fresh and striking as he is as
a scientific one. He says, "Above all, I do not believe much in
anecdotes."

Why? "In history they are all false"--a sufficiently broad
statement--"in literature all libelous"--also a sufficiently sweeping
statement, coming from a critic who notes that we are "a people who are
peculiarly extravagant in our language--" and when it is a matter of
social life, "almost all biased." It seems to amount to stultification,
almost. He has built two or three breeds of American coquettes out
of anecdotes--mainly "biased" ones, I suppose; and, as they occur "in
literature," furnished by his pen, they must be "all libelous." Or did
he mean not in literature or anecdotes about literature or literary
people? I am not able to answer that. Perhaps the original would be
clearer, but I have only the translation of this installment by me. I
think the remark had an intention; also that this intention was booked
for the trip; but that either in the hurry of the remark's departure
it got left, or in the confusion of changing cars at the