she has undoubtedly performed on a more extensive plan for the benefit of the universe; at once diversifying and equalizing all. Are you satisfied, madam, said I? Have I given your imagination room to exert itself? Do you not already see the people of different planets? No, answered she, with a sigh: all you have been saying is so vague and unsatisfactory; there is nothing in it for the mind to fix on. I want something more determined; more marked. Well then, I replied, I will not conceal any particulars that I am acquainted with: I can give you some information that you will acknowledge to be undoubted, when I tell you my authorities. Prepare to listen patiently if you please, for it is a long story. In one of the planets, I shall not at present tell you which, there is a people that are very active, laborious and skillful. Like some of our Arabs, they live by pillage, and that is their only fault. They live together in the most harmonious manner, labouring incessantly and in concert, for the common good: above all their chastity is unexampled; it is true they have no great merit in it; they are all sterile; there is no difference of sex among them. But, interrupted the Marchioness, were you not aware that the author of this marvellous story wanted to make a fool of you? How could such a nation be perpetuated? No, I replied, very coolly, they did not intend to make a fool of me; all that I have told you is fact, yet the nation is perpetuated. They have a queen whose royalty consists, not in directing the business of the state, not in leading her subjects to the field of battle, but in her surprizing fecundity, she has millions of children; in short the production of them occupies the whole of her time. She has a large palace, divided into a vast number of chambers, in each of which a cradle is prepared for a little prince, and she is confined successively in all these chambers, always surrounded by her courtiers who congratulate her on the noble privilege she enjoys exclusively of her subjects.