A. Well; but should the knowledge that storms are coming prevent our enjoying the beautiful sunshine and gentle and fragrant gales of the present day? Did the earthquake that destroyed half the city of Lisbon prevent your making a very pleasant journey from Madrid? If Attila was a bandit, and Cardinal Mazarin a knave, are there not some princes and ministers respectable and amiable men? Has it not been remarked, that in the war of 1701, the Council of Louis XIV. consisted of some of the most virtuous of mankind--the duke of Beauvilliers, the Marquis de Torcy, Marshal Villars, and finally Chamillard, who was not indeed considered a very able but still an honorable man? Does not the idea of just and unjust still exist? It is in fact on this that all laws are founded. The Greeks call laws "the daughters of heaven", which means simply, the daughters of nature. Have you no laws in your country? B. Yes; some good, and others bad. A. Where could you have taken the idea of them, but from the notions of natural law which every well-constructed mind has within itself? They must have been derived from these or nothing. B. You are right; there is a natural law, but it is still more natural to many people to forget or neglect it. A. It is natural also to be one-eyed, humpbacked, lame, deformed, and sickly; but we prefer persons well made and healthy. B. Why are there so many one-eyed and deformed minds? A. Hush! Consult, however, the article on "Omnipotence." LAW (SALIC). He who says that the Salic law was written with a pen from the wing of a two-headed eagle, by Pharamond's almoner, on the back of the patent containing Constantine's donation, was not, perhaps, very much mistaken. It is, say the doughty lawyers, the fundamental law of the French Empire. The great Jerome Bignon, in his book on "The Excellence of France," says that this law is derived from natural law, according to the great Aristotle, because "in families it was the father who governed, and no dower was given to daughters, as we read in relation to the father, mother, and brothers of Rebecca." He asserts that the kingdom of France is so excellent that it has religiously preserved this law, recommended both by Aristotle and the Old Testament. And to prove this excellence of France, he observes also, that the emperor Julian thought the wine of Surêne admirable. But in order to demonstrate the excellence of the Salic law, he refers to Froissart, according to whom the twelve peers of France said that "the kingdom of France is of such high nobility that it never ought to pass in succession to a female." It must be acknowledged that this decision is not a little uncivil to Spain, England, Naples, and Hungary, and more than all the rest to Russia, which has seen on its throne four empresses in succession. The kingdom of France is of great nobility; no doubt it is; but those of Spain, of Mexico, and Peru are also of great nobility, and there is great nobility also in Russia.