"I am equally at a loss to understand how the god of sleep, whom Juno prays to close the eyes of Jupiter, can be so brisk a divinity. He arrives in a moment from the isles of Lemnos and Imbros; there is something fine in coming from two islands at once. He then mounts a pine and, is instantly among the Greek ships; he seeks Neptune, finds him, conjures him to give the victory to the Greeks, and returns with a rapid flight to Lemnos. I know of nothing so nimble as this god of sleep. "In short, if in an epic poem there must be amorous matters, I own that I incomparably prefer the assignations of Alcina with Rogero, and of Armida with Rinaldo. Come, my dear Florentine, read me those two admirable cantos of Ariosto and Tasso." The Florentine readily obeyed, and his lordship was enchanted; during which time the Scotchman reperused Fingal, the Oxford professor reperused Homer; and every one was content. It was at last agreed that happy is he who is sensible to the merits of the ancients and the moderns, appreciates their beauties, knows their faults and pardons them. ANECDOTES. If Suetonius could be confronted with the valets-de-chambre of the twelve Cæsars, think you that they would in every instance corroborate his testimony? And in case of dispute, who would not back the valets-de-chambre against the historian? In our own times, how many books are founded on nothing more than the talk of the town?--just as the science of physics was founded on chimeras which have been repeated from age to age to the present time. Those who take the trouble of noting down at night what they have heard in the day, should, like St. Augustine, write a book of retractions at the end of the year. Some one related to the _grand-audiencier_ l'Étoile that Henry IV., hunting near Créteil, went alone into an inn where some Parisian lawyers were dining in an upper room. The king, without making himself known, sent the hostess to ask them if they would admit him at their table or sell him a part of their dinner. They sent him for answer that they had private business to talk of and had but a short dinner; they therefore begged that the stranger would excuse them. Henry called his guards and had the guests outrageously beaten, to teach them, says de l'Étoile, to show more courtesy to gentlemen. Some authors of the present day, who have taken upon them to write the life of Henry IV., copy this anecdote from de l'Étoile without examination, and, which is worse, fail not to praise it as a fine action in Henry. The thing is, however, neither true nor likely; and were it true, Henry would have been guilty of an act at once the most ridiculous, the most cowardly, the most tyrannical, and the most imprudent.