_First Hour_. Well, your Excellency knows best what is right, and can do as it pleases you. But nevertheless, will your Excellency deign to think what a number of beautiful and useful things will be destroyed by this new decree. The day will be deprived of its handsome gilded chariot, and beautiful horses, which bathe themselves in the sea. Amongst other changes, we poor Hours must suffer; we shall no longer have a place in heaven, but shall have to descend from our position as celestial children to that of terrestrials, unless, as is more probable, we dissolve into thin air instead. But be that as it may, the difficulty will be to persuade the Earth to go round, necessarily a hard thing, because it is unaccustomed to do so; and the experience of rotating and exerting itself incessantly will be all the more strange, seeing that hitherto it has never stirred from its present position. If, then, your Excellency now begins to think of idleness, I fear the Earth will be as little desirous of bestirring itself as ever it was. _Sun_. In that case, it must be pricked, and made to bestir itself as much as is necessary. But the quickest and surest way is to find a poet, or, better, a philosopher, who will persuade the Earth to move itself, or persuasion being unsuccessful, will use force. For philosophers and poets ordinarily manage these affairs. When I was younger I used to have a great esteem for the poets, though they rather caricatured me in representing me racing madly, great and stout as I am, round and round a grain of sand, simply for the sake of amusement or exercise. But now that I am older, I am more partial to philosophy. I study to discern the utility, not the beauty of things, and poetry seems to me either absurd or wearisome. I wish, also, to have good substantial reasons for whatever I do. Now, I see no reason why I should value a life of activity more than a life of ease and idleness. I have determined, therefore, in future, to leave the fatigues and discomforts to others, and for my own part to live quietly at home, without undertaking business of any kind. This change in me is partly due to my age, but has chiefly been brought about by the philosophers, a race of people whose power and influence increase daily. Consequently, to induce the Earth to rotate in my place, a poet would intrinsically be better than a philosopher: because the poets are accustomed to give a fictitious value to things by exaggerating the truth, beauty, and utility of subjects about which they treat, and because by raising a thousand pleasurable hopes, they often incite people to fatigues they would else have avoided; whereas philosophers weary them. But, now that the power of philosophers is so predominant, I doubt whether a poet would be of much use, if even the Earth gave him a hearing. Therefore, we had better have recourse to a philosopher. It is true, philosophers are usually little suited, and still less