Boileau, the celebrated French comedian, usually passed the summer at
his villa of Auteuil, which is pleasantly situated at the entrance of
the Bois de Boulogne. Here he took delight in assembling under his roof
the most eminent geniuses of the age; especially Chapelle, Racine,
Moliere, and La Fontaine. Racine the younger gives the following account
of a droll circumstance that occurred at supper at Auteuil with these
guests. "At this supper," he says, "at which my father was not present,
the wise Boileau was no more master of himself than any of his guests.
After the wine had led them into the gravest strain of moralising, they
agreed that life was but a state of misery; that the greatest happiness
consisted in having been born, and the next greatest in an early death;
and they one and all formed the heroic resolution of throwing themselves
without loss of time into the river. It was not far off, and they actually
went thither. Moliere, however, remarked that such a noble action ought
not to be buried in the obscurity of night, but was worthy of being
performed in the face of day. This observation produced a pause; one
looked at the other, and said, 'He is right.' 'Gentlemen,' said Chapelle,
'we had better wait till morning to throw ourselves into the river, and
meantime return and finish our wine;'" but the river was not revisited.

* * * * *

THOMSON'S INDOLENCE.

The author of the _Seasons_ and the _Castle of Indolence_, paid homage
in the latter admirable poem to the master-passion or habit of his own
easy nature. Thomson was so excessively lazy, that he is recorded to
have been seen standing at a peach-tree, with both his hands in his
pockets, eating the fruit as it grew. At another time, being found in
bed at a very late hour of the day, when he was asked why he did not get
up, his answer was, "Troth, man, I see nae motive for rising!"

* * * * *

A LEARNED YOUNG LADY.

Fraulein Dorothea Schlozer, a Hanoverian lady, was thought worthy of the
highest academical honours of Goettingen University, and, at the jubilee
of 1787, she had the degree of Doctor of Philosophy conferred upon her,
when only seventeen years of age. The daughter of the Professor of
Philosophy in that University, she from her earliest years discovered an
uncommon genius for learning. Before she was three years of age, she was
taught Low German, a language almost foreign to her