You will find the story, I think, not altogether uninteresting; and the coincidence, in many respects, of the curious details in Chap. VI. with the description of the same ceremonies in the Romance of _Sethos_(1), will, I have no doubt, strike you. Hoping that you may be tempted to give a translation of this Tale to the world, I am, my dear Sir, Very truly yours, —— THE EPICUREAN. CHAPTER I. It was in the fourth year of the reign of the late Emperor Valerian, that the followers of Epicurus, who were at that time numerous in Athens, proceeded to the election of a person to fill the vacant chair of their sect;—and, by the unanimous voice of the School, I was the individual chosen for their Chief. I was just then entering on my twenty‐fourth year, and no instance had ever before occurred, of a person so young being selected for that office. Youth, however, and the personal advantages that adorn it, were not, it may be supposed, among the least valid recommendations, to a sect that included within its circle all the beauty as well as wit of Athens, and which, though dignifying its pursuits with the name of philosophy, was little else than a pretext for the more refined cultivation of pleasure. The character of the sect had, indeed, much changed, since the time of its wise and virtuous founder, who, while he asserted that Pleasure is the only Good, inculcated also that Good is the only source of Pleasure. The purer part of this doctrine had long evaporated, and the temperate Epicurus would have as little recognised his own sect in the assemblage of refined voluptuaries who now usurped its name, as he would have known his own quiet Garden in the luxurious groves and bowers among which the meetings of the School were now held.