These tales of Herodotus, as well as all others in the same taste, are now so decried by all people of sense--reason has made so great progress that even old women and children will no longer believe such extravagances--_"Non est vetula quæ credat nec pueri credunt, nisi qui nondum ære lavantur."_ There is in our days only one man who, not partaking of the spirit of the age in which he lives, would justify the fable of Herodotus. The infamy appears to him a very simple affair. He would prove that the Babylonian princesses prostituted themselves through piety, to the first passengers, because it is said in the holy writings that the Ammonites made their children pass through the fire in presenting them to Moloch. But what relation has this custom of some barbarous hordes--this superstition of passing their children through the flames, or even of burning them on piles, in honor of I know not whom--of Moloch; these Iroquois horrors of a petty, infamous people to a prostitution so incredible in a nation known to be the most jealous and orderly of the East? Would what passes among the Iroquois be among us a proof of the customs of the courts of France and of Spain? He also brings, in further proof, the Lupercal feast among the Romans during which he says the young people of quality and respectable magistrates ran naked through the city with whips in their hands, with which they struck the pregnant women of quality, who unblushingly presented themselves to them in the hope of thereby obtaining a happy deliverance. Now, in the first place, it is not said that these Romans of quality ran quite naked, on the contrary, Plutarch expressly observes, in his remarks on the custom, that they were covered from the waist downwards. Secondly, it seems by the manner in which this defender of infamous customs expresses himself that the Roman ladies stripped naked to receive these blows of the whip, which is absolutely false. Thirdly, the Lupercal feast has no relation whatever to the pretended law of Babylon, which commands the wives and daughters of the king, the satraps, and the magi to sell and prostitute themselves to strangers out of pure devotion. When an author, without knowing either the human mind or the manners of nations, has the misfortune to be obliged to compile from passages of old authors, who are almost all contradictory, he should advance his opinions with modesty and know how to doubt, and to shake off the dust of the college. Above all he should never express himself with outrageous insolence. Herodotus, or Ctesias, or Diodorus of Sicily, relate a fact: you have read it in Greek, therefore this fact is true. This manner of reasoning, which is not that of Euclid, is surprising enough in the time in which we live; but all minds will not be instructed with equal facility; and there are always more persons who compile than people who think.