he 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 p