Youth and health are the only genuine philtres. Chocolate was for a long time in great celebrity with our debilitated _petits-maîtres_. But a man may take twenty cups of chocolate without inspiring any attachment to his person.--"_... ut amoris amabilis esto_." (Ovid, A. A. ii., 107.)--"Wouldst thou be loved, be amiable." END OF THE WORLD. The greater part of the Greek philosophers held the universe to be eternal both with respect to commencement and duration. But as to this petty portion of the world or universe, this globe of stone and earth and water, of minerals and vapors, which we inhabit, it was somewhat difficult to form an opinion; it was, however, deemed very destructible. It was even said that it had been destroyed more than once, and would be destroyed again. Every one judged of the whole world from his own particular country, as an old woman judges of all mankind from those in her own nook and neighborhood. This idea of the end of our little world and its renovation strongly possessed the imagination of the nations under subjection to the Roman Empire, amidst the horrors of the civil wars between Cæsar and Pompey. Virgil, in his "Georgics" (i., 468), alludes to the general apprehension which rilled the minds of the common people from this cause: "_Impiaque eternam timuerunt secula noctem_."--"And impious men now dread eternal night." Lucan, in the following lines, expresses himself much more explicitly: _Hos Cæsar populos, si nunc non usserit ignis_ _Uret cum terris, uret cum gurgite ponti._ _Communis mundo superest rogus...._ --PHARS. vii. v. 812, 14. Though now thy cruelty denies a grave, These and the world one common lot shall have; One last appointed flame, by fate's decree, Shall waste yon azure heavens, the earth, and sea. --ROWE. And Ovid, following up the observations of Lucan, says: _Esse quoque in fatis reminiscitur affore tempus,_ _Quo mare, quo tellus, correptaque regia cœli_, _Ardent et mundi moles operosa laboret._ --MET. i. v. 256, 58. For thus the stern, unyielding fates decree, That earth, air, heaven, with the capacious sea, All shall fall victims to consuming fire, And in fierce flames the blazing world expire. Consult Cicero himself, the philosophic Cicero. He tells us, in his book concerning the "Nature of the Gods," the best work perhaps of all antiquity, unless we make an exception in favor of his treatise on human duties, called "The Offices"; in that book, I say, he remarks: