"There is a constant struggle," continued he, "between feeling and reason in the human breast. In youth, it is wisely ordained that feeling should have the ascendancy; and she rules like a monarch, with imagination for her minister;--though, by the way," he added, with a passing smile, so slight that it scarcely curled his lip,--"though, by the way, the minister is often much more active than the monarch. In after years, when feeling has done for man all that feeling was intended to do, and carried him into a thousand follies, eventually very beneficial to himself, and to the human race, reason succeeds to the throne, to finish what feeling left undone, and to remedy what she did wrong. Now, you are in the age of feeling, and I am in the age of reason; and the consequence is, that even in reading such a book as Ovid, what we cull is as different as the wax and the honey which a bee gathers from the same flower. What touches you is the wit and brilliancy of the thought, the sweetness of the poetry, the bright and luxurious pictures which are presented to your imagination: while all that affects me little; and, shadowed through a thousand splendid allegories, I see great and sublime truths, robed, as it were, by the verse and the poetry in a radiant garment of light. What can be a truer picture of an ambitious and a daring minister, than Ixion embracing a cloud?" and he looked me full in the face, with a smile of melancholy meaning, to which I did not well know how to reply. "I have certainly never considered Ovid in that light," replied I; "and I have to thank your eminence for the pleasure I shall doubtless enjoy in tracing the allegories throughout." "The thanks are not my due," replied the minister; "an English statesman, near a century ago, wrote a book upon the subject; and showed his own wisdom, while he pointed out that of the ancients. In England, the reign of reason is much stronger than it is with us in France, though they may be considered as a younger people." "Then does your Eminence consider," demanded I, "that the change from feeling to reason proceeds apace with the age of nations, as well as with men?"