Why are American authors so commonly wan and gaunt, with none of the external marks of healthy gayety? Is it the climate, or the lack of out-door exercise, or hot-air furnaces, or rascally cooks? They look as if, like Burns's man, they "were made to mourn." If they conceive a joke, their sad, sharp voices and angular gesticulations make it miscarry. Now and then they rebel against their constitutions, poor fellows, and try to imitate the jovial ancestors they have read of; babble shrilly of _noctes coenaeque Deum, petits soupers_, and what not. It is mostly idle talk. They know too well that digestion does not wait upon appetite in the evening,--and that they will feel better for the next week, if they restrict their debauch to dandelion coffee and Graham bread. Moreover, the age of conviviality is gone, as much as the age of chivalry. _Petits soupers_ are impossible in this part of the world. Let us manfully confess one reason: they cost too much. And we have not the wit, nor the wicked women, nor the same jolly paganism. Juno Lucina reigns here in the stead of Venus; and Bacchus is two dollars a bottle. But these and other good things Regnard had in abundance, and so lived smoothly and happily on, defying time,--for he held, with Mme. de Thianges, "_On ne viellit point a table_" until one day he overheated himself in shooting, drank abundantly of cold water, and fell dead,--Euthanasia. He died a bachelor, and, if we may judge from many of his verses, seems, like Thackeray, to have wondered why Frenchmen ever married. But he had a keen eye for "the fair defect of Nature." Strabon's description of young Criseis before her glass could have been written only by an amateur:-- "Je la voyais tantot devant une toilette D'une _mouche assasine irriter ses attraits_." Neither Moliere, Regnard, nor Le Sage was a member of the Academy.