That of the belly and the members, which calmed a tumult in Rome about two thousand three hundred years ago, is { ingenious, and without fault. The more ancient the fables, the more allegorical they were. put out Love's eyes, is condemned to be his guide. The fables attributed to Esop are all emblems; instructions to the weak, to guard them as much as possible against the snares of the strong. All nations, Is not the ancient fable of Venus, as possessing a little wisdom, have adopted related by Hesiod, entirely a fable of na- them. La Fontaine has treated them with ture? This Venus is the goddess of the most elegance. About eighty of them beauty. Beauty ceases to be lovely, if are master-pieces of simplicity, grace, unaccompanied by the graces. Beautyfinesse, and sometimes even of poetry. produces love. Love has features which pierce all hearts; he wears a bandage, which conceals the faults of those beloved. He has wings; he comes quickly, and flies away the same. It is one of the advantages of the age of Louis XIV. to have produced a La Fontaine. He has so well discovered, almost without seeking it, the art of making one read, that he has had a greater reputation in France than genius itself. Boileau has never reckoned him among those who did honour to the great age of Wisdom is conceived in the brain of the chief of the gods, under the name of Minerva. The soul of man is a divine fire, which Minerva shows to Promethe-Louis XIV.; his reason or his pretext us, who makes use of this divine fire to animate mankind. It is impossible, in these fables, not to recognise a lively picture of pure nature. Most other fables are either corruptions of ancient histories, or the caprices of the imagination. It is with ancient fables as with our modern tales; some convey charming morals, and others very insipid ones. was, that he had never invented anything. What will better bear out Boileau is, the great number of errors in language, and the incorrectness of style; faults which La Fontaine might have avoided, and which this severe critic could not pardon. His grasshopper, for instance; who, having sang all the summer, went to beg from the ant her neighbour in the winter, telling her, on the word of an animal, that she would pay her principal and interest before Midsummer. To whom the ant replies:-"You sang, did you; I am glad of it; then now dance." The ingenious fables of the ancients have been grossly imitated by an unenlightened race-witness those of Bacchus, Hercules, Prometheus, Pandora, and many others, which were the amusement His astrologer, again, who falling into of the ancient world. The barbarians, a ditch while gazing at the stars, was who confusedly heard them spoken of, asked:-" Poor wretch! do you expect adopted them into their own savage my-to be able to read things so much above thology, and afterwards it is pretended that they invented them. Alas! poor unknown and ignorant people, who knew no art either useful or agreeable-to whom even the name of geometry was unknown-dare you say that you have invented anything? You have not known either how to discover truth, or to lie adroitly. The most elegant Greek fable was that of Psyche; the most pleasant, that of the Ephesian matron. The prettiest among the moderns is that of Folly, who, having you!" Yet Copernicus, Galileo, Cassini, and Halley, have read the heavens very well; and the best astronomer that ever existed might fall into a ditch without being a poor wretch. Judicial astrology is indeed a very ridiculous charlatanism, but the ridiculousness does not consist in regarding the heavens ; it consists in believing, or in making believe, that you read what is not there. Several of these fables, either ill chosen or badly written, .certainly merit the censure of Boileau. Nothing is more insipid than the fable of the drowned woman, whose corpse was sought contrary to the course of the river, because in her life-time she had always been contradictory. The tribute sent by the animals to King Alexander is a fable, which is not the better for being ancient. The animats sent no money, neither did the lion advise them to steal it. The satyr who received a peasant into his hut should not have turned him out on seeing that he blew his fingers because he was cold; and afterwards, on taking the dish between his teeth, that he blew his pottage because it was hot. The man was quite right, and the satyr was a fool. Besides, we do not take hold of dishes with our teeth. The crab-mother, who reproached her daughter with not walking straight; and the daughter, who answered that her mother walked crooked, is not an agreeable fable. The bush and the duck, in commercial partnership with the bat, having counters, factors, agents, paying principle and interest, &c., has neither truth, nature, nor any kind of merit. A bush, which goes with a bat into foreign countries to trade, is one of those cold and unnatural inventions, which La{ Fontaine should not have adopted. A house full of dogs and cats, living together like cousins and quarrelling for a dish of pottage, seems also very unworthy of a man of taste. The chattering magpie is still worse. The eagle tells her that he declines her company because she talks too much. On which La Fontaine remarks that it is necessary, at court, to wear two faces. Where is the merit of the fable of the kite presented by a bird-catcher to a king, whose nose he had seized with his claws? The ape who married a Parisian girl, and beat her, is an unfortunate story, presented to La Fontaine, and which he bas been so unfortunate as to put into verse. Such fables as these, and some others, may doubtless justify Boileau: it might even happen that La Fontaine could not distinguish the bad fables from the {good. Madame de la Sablière called La Fontaine a fabulist, who bore fables as naturally as a plum-tree bears plums. It is true that he had only one style, and that he wrote an opera in the style of his fables. Notwithstanding all this, Boileau should have rendered justice to the singu. lar merit of the good man, as he calls him; and to the public, who are right in being enchanted with the style of many of his fables. La Fontaine was not an original or a sublime writer, a man of established taste, or one of the first geniuses of a brilliant era; and it is a very remarkable fault in him, that he speaks not his own language correctly. He is in this respect very inferior to Phædrus, but he was a man unique in the excellent pieces that he has left us. They are very numerous, and are in the mouths of all those who have been respectably brought up: they contribute even to their education. They will descend to posterity: they are adapted for all men and for all times, while those of Boileau suit only men of letters. Of those Fanatics who would suppress the Ancient Fubles. There is, among those whom we call Jansenists, a little sect of hard and empty heads, who would suppress the beautiful fables of antiquity, to substitute St. Prosper in the place of Ovid, and Santeuil in that of Horace. If they were attended to, our pictures would no longer represent Iris on the rainbow, or Minerva with her ægis; but instead of them, we should have Nicholas and Arnauld fighting against the Jesuits and Protestants; Mademoiselle Perrier cured of sore eyes by a thorn from the crown of Jesus Christ, brought from Jerusalem to Port Royai; Counsellor Carré de Montgeron presenting the account of St. Medard to Los XV.; and St. Ovid resuscitating little boys. hood; Flora, caressed by Zephyrus, &c. -are they not all sensible personifications of pure nature? These fables have sur In the eyes of these austere sages, Fenelon was only an idolater, who, follow-vived the religions which consecrated ing the example of the impious poem of the Æneid, introduced the child Cupid with the nymph Eucharis. Pluche, at the end of his fable of the Heavens, entitled their History, writes a long dissertation to prove that it is shameful to have tapestry worked in figures taken from Ovid's Metamorphoses; and that Zephyrus and Flora, Vertumnus and Pomona, should be banished from the gardens of Versailles. He exhorts the school of belles-lettres to oppose itself to this bad taste; which reform alone, he says, is capable of re-establishing the belles-lettres. them. The temples of the gods of Egypt, Greece, and Rome, are no more, but Ovid still exists. Objects of credulity may be destroyed, but not those of pleasure; we shall for ever love these true and lively images. Lucretius did not believe in these fabulous gods, but he celeį brated nature under the name of Venus. Alma Venus coeli subter labentia signa Kind Venus, glory of the blest abodes, To whose kind power all creatures owe their birth, &c. it governed the sea under the name of Neptune, the air under the image of Juno, and the country under that of Pan. It was the divinity of armies under the name of Mars: all these attributes were animated personifications. Jupiter was the only god. The golden chain with which he bound the inferior gods and men, was a striking image of the unity of a sovereign being. The people were deceived, but what are the people to us? Other puritans, more severe than sage, a little time ago, would have proscribed If antiquity, in its obscurity, was led the ancient mythology as a collection of to acknowledge divinity in its images, puerile tales, unworthy the acknowledged how is it to be blamed? The productive gravity of our manners. It would, how-soul of the world was adored by the sages; ever, be a pity to burn Ovid, Horace, Hesiod, our fine tapestry pictures, and our opera. If we are spared the familiar stories of sop, why lay hands on those sublime fables, which have been respected by mankind, whom they have instructed? They are mingled with many insipidities, no doubt, but what good is without an alloy? All ages will adopt Pandora's box, at the bottom of which was found man's only consolation-hope; Jupiter's two vessels, which unceasingly poured It is continually demanded why the forth good and evil; the cloud embraced Greek and Roman magistrates permitted by Ixion, which is the emblem and pun- the divinities whom they adored in ishment of an ambitious man; and the their temples to be ridiculed on their death of Narcissus, which is the punish-stage? This is a false supposition. The ment of self-love. What is more sub-gods were not mocked in their theatres, lime than the image of Minerva, the goddess of wisdom, formed in the head of the master of the gods? What is more true and agreeable than the goddess of beauty, always accompanied by the graces? The goddesses of the arts, all daughters of memory-do they not teach us, as well as Locke, that without memory we cannot possess either judgment or wit? The arrows of Love, his fillet, and his child but the follies attributed to these gods by those who had corrupted the ancient mythology. The consuls and prætors found it good to treat the adventure of the two Sosias wittily, but they would not have suffered the worship of Jupiter and Mercury to be attacked before the people. It is thus that a thousand things which appear contradictory are not so in reality. I have seen, in the theatre of a learned and witty nation, pieces taken from the golden Legend: will it, on that account, be said that this nation permits its objects of religion to be insulted? It need not be feared we shall become Pagans for having heard the opera of Proserpine at Paris, or for having seen the nuptials of Psyche, painted by Raphael, in the pope's palace at Rome. Fable forms the taste, but renders no person idola trous. The beautiful fables of antiquity have also this great advantage over history: they are lessons of virtue, while almost all history narrates the success of vice. Jupiter, in the fable, descends upon earth to punish Tantalus and Lycaon; but in history our Tantaluses and Lycaons are the gods of the earth. Baucis and Philemon had their cabin changed into a temple; our Baucises and Philemons are obliged to sell, for the collector of the taxes, those kettles which, in Ovid, the gods changed into vases of gold. To look at events only, history seems to Tous les arts sont amis, ainsi qu'ils sont divins: FACTION. On the Meaning of the Word. The word 'faction' come from the Latin facere; it is employed to signify the state of a soldier at his post, on duty (enfaction) squadrons or troops of combatants in the circus; green, blue, red, and white factions. The acceptation in which the term is generally used is that of a seditious party in the state. The term party in itself implies nothing that is odious, that of faction is always odious. I know how much history can instruct us, and how necessary it is to know it; but it requires much ingenuity to be able to draw from it any rules for individual conduct. Those who only know politics through books, will be often reminded of those lines of Corneille, which observe, that examples will seldom suffice for our guidance, as it often happens that one person perishes by the very expedienting which has proved the salvation of ano ther. Les exemples recens suffiraient pour m'instruire A great man, and even a man possessonly mediocrity of talent, may easily have a party at court, in the army, in the city, or in literature. A man may have a party in consequence of his merit, in consequence of the zeal and number of his friends, without being the head of a party. Henry VIII., the tyrant of his parlia- Marshal Catinat, although little rement, his ministers and his wives, ofgarded at court, had a large party in consciences and purses, lived and died the army without making any effort to peaceably. Charles I. perished on the obtain it. caffold. Margaret of Anjou in vain waged war in person a dozen times with the English, the subjects of her husband, while William III. drove James II. from England without a battle. In our days A seditious party, while it is yet weak, we have seen the royal family of Persia and has no influence in the government, murdered, and strangers upon the throne.is only a faction. A head of a party is always a head of a faction: such were Cardinal Retz, Henry Duke of Guise, and various others. Cæsar's faction speedily became a dominant party, which swallowed up the republic. When the Emperor Charles VI. disputed the throne of Spain with Philip V. he had a party in that kingdom, and, at length, he had no more than a faction in it. Yet we may always be allowed to talk of the "party" of Charles VI. It is different with respect to private persons. Descartes for a long time had a party in France; it would be incorrect to say he had a faction. Thus we perceive that words in many cases synonymous cease to be so in others. FACULTY. ALL the powers of matter and mind are faculties; and, what is still worse, faculties of which we know nothing, perfectly occult qualities; to begin with motion, of which no one has dicovered the origin. When the president of the faculty of medicine, in the "Malade Imaginaire," asks Thomas Diafoirus,-Quare opium facit dormire?" Why does opium cause sleep? Thomas very pertinently replies, "Quia est in eo virtus dormitiva quæ facit sopiere." Because it possesses a dormitive power producing sleep. The greatest philosophers cannot speak more to the purpose. { mines the alternate influx of the nervous fluid into the fibres which move the vital organs in order to produce the alternate contradiction of those organs." This amounts precisely to the answer of the young physician Thomas,-"Quia est in eo virtus alterniva quæ facit alternare." And Thomas Diafoirus has at least the merit of being shortest. The faculty of moving the foot when we wish to do so, of recalling to mind past events, or of exercising our five senses; in short, any and all of our faculties will admit of no further or better explanation than that of Diafoirus. But consider thought! say those who understand the whole secret. Thought, which distinguishes man from all animals besides! Sanctius his animal, mentisque capacius alte. As holy as you like; it is on this subject, that of thought or mind, that Dia{foirus is more triumphant than ever. All would reply in accordance with him, "Quia est in eo virtus pensativa quæ facit pensare." No one will ever develope the mysterious process by which he thinks. The case we are considering, then, might be extended to everything in nature. I know not whether there may not be The honest chevalier Jaucour acknow-found in this profound and unfathomable ledges, under the article SLEEP, that it is impossible to go beyond conjecture with respect to the cause of it, Another Thomas, and in much higher reverence than his bachelor namesake in the comedy, has, in fact, made no other reply to all the questions which are started throughout his immense volumes. gulph of mystery, an evidence of the existence of a supreme being. There is a secret in the originating or conservatory principles of all beings, from a pebble on the sea shore to Saturn's Ring and the Milky Way. But how can there be a secret which no one knows? It would seem that some being must exist who can develope all. It is said, under the article FACULTY, in the grand Encylopædia, " that the vi- Some learned men, with a view to ental faculty once established in the intel-lighten our ignorance, tell us that we ligent principle by which we are ani- must form systems; that we shall at last mated, it may be easily conceived that find the secret cut. But we have so long the faculty, stimulated by the expressions sought without obtaining any explanation, which the vital sensorium transmits to that disgust against farther search has very part of the common sensorium, deter-naturally succeeded. That, say they, is |