(From the French of Voltaire.)
_Mad. de Pomp._--Who may this lady be with acquiline nose and large
black eyes; with such height and noble bearing; with mien so proud, yet
so coquettish, who enters my chamber without being announced, and makes
her obeisance in a religious fashion?
_Tullia._--I am Tullia, born at Rome, about eighteen hundred years
ago; I make the Roman obeisance, not the French, and have come, I scarce
know from whence, to see your country, yourself, and your toilette.
_Mad. de. P._--Ah, madam, do me the honour of seating yourself. An
arm-chair for the Lady Tullia.
_Tullia._--For whom? me, madam? and am I to sit on that little
incommodious sort of throne, so that my legs must hang down and become
quite red?
_Mad. de P._--Upon what then would you sit?
_Tullia._--Madam, upon a couch.
_Mad. de P._--Ay, I understand--you would say upon a sofa; there
stands one, upon which you may recline at your ease.
_Tullia._--I am charmed to see that the French have furniture as
convenient as ours.
_Mad. de P._--Hah, hah, madam, you've no stockings! your legs are
naked, but ornamented, however, with a very pretty ribbon, after the
fashion of a sandal.
_Tullia._--We knew nothing about stockings, which, as a useful and
agreeable invention, I certainly prefer to our sandals.
_Mad. da P._--Good heavens, madam, I believe you've no _chemise!_
_Tullia._--No, madam, in my time nobody wore one.
_Mad. de P._--And in what time did you live?
_Tullia._--In the time of Sylla, Pompey, Caesar, Cato, Cataline; and
Cicero, to whom I have the honour of being daughter: of that Cicero, of
whom one of your _protegés_ has made mention in barbarous verse.[3] I
went yesterday to the theatre, where Cataline was represented with all
the celebrated people of my time, but I did not recognise one of them;
and when my father exhorted me to make advances to Cataline, I was
astonished! But, madam, you seem to have some beautiful mirrors; your
chamber is full of them; our mirrors were not a sixteenth part so large
as yours; are they of steel?
_Mad. de P._--No, madam, they are made with sand, and nothing is more
common amongst us.
_Tullia._--What an admirable art! I confess we had none such! And oh!
what a beautiful painting too you have there!
_Mad. de P._--It is not a painting, but a print, done merely with
lamp-black; a hundred copies of the same design may be struck off in a
day, and this secret immortalizes pictures, which time would otherwise
destroy.
_Tullia._--It is indeed an astonishing secret! we Romans had nothing
like it!
_Un Savant._--(A literary man there present, taking up the discourse,
and producing a book from his pocket, says to Tullia:) You will be
astonished, madam, to learn, that this book is not written by hand, but
that it is printed almost in a manner similar to engravings; and that
this invention also immortalizes works of the mind.
(The _Savant_ presents his book, a collection of verses dedicated to the
Marchioness, to Tullia, who reads a page, admires the type, and says to
the author:)
_Tullia._--Truly, sir, printing is a fine thing; and if it can
immortalize such verses as these, it appears to me to be the noblest
effort of art. But do you not at least employ this invention in printing
the works of my father?
The _Savant._--Yes, madam, but nobody reads them; I am truly concerned
for your father, but in these days, little is known of him save his
name.
(Here are brought in chocolate, tea, coffee, and ices. Tullia is
astonished to see, in summer, cream and strawberries[4] iced. She is
informed that such congealed beverages are obtained in five minutes,
by means of the salt-petre with which they are surrounded, and that by
continual motion, is produced their firmness and icy coldness. She is
speechless with astonishment. The dark colour of the chocolate and
coffee, somewhat disgust her, and she asks whether these liquids are
extracted from the plants of the country?--A duke who is present,
replies:)
_Duke._--The fruits of which these beverages are composed, come from
another world, and from the Gulf of Arabia.
_Tullia._--Arabia I remember; but never heard mention made of what you
call coffee; and as for another world, I know only of that from whence
I came, and do assure you, we have no chocolate there.
_Duke._--The world of which we tell you, madam, is a continent, called
America, almost as large as Europe, Asia, and Africa, put together; and
of which we have a knowledge less vague, than of the world from whence
you came.
_Tullia._--What! Did we then, who styled ourselves masters of the world,
possess only half of it? The reflection is truly humiliating!
The _Savant._--(piqued that Tullia had pronounced his verses bad,
replies dryly:) Yes, your countrymen who boasted of having made
themselves masters of the world, had scarce conquered the twentieth part
of it. We have at this moment, at the further end of Europe, an empire
larger in itself than the Roman:[5] it is governed, too, by a woman, who
excels you in intellect and beauty, and who wears _chemises;_ had she
read my verses, I am certain she would have thought them good.
(The Marchioness commands silence on the part of the author, who has
treated a Roman lady, the daughter of Cicero, with disrespect. The duke
explains the discovery of America, and taking out his watch, to which is
appended, by way of trinket, a small mariner's compass, shows her how,
by means of a needle, another hemisphere is reached. The amazement of
the fair Roman redoubles at every word which she hears, and every thing
she beholds; and she at length exclaims:)
_Tullia._--I begin to fear that the moderns really do surpass the
ancients; on this point I came to satisfy myself, and doubt not I shall
have to carry back a melancholy report to my father.
_Duke._--Console yourself, madam, no man amongst us equals your
illustrious sire; neither does any come near Caesar, with whom you were
contemporary, nor the Scipios who preceded him. Nature, it is true
creates, even at this day, powerful intellects, but they resemble rare
seeds, which cannot arrive at maturity in an uncongenial soil. The
simile does not hold good respecting arts and sciences; time, and
fortunate chances, have perfected them. It would, for example, be easier
for us to produce a Sophocles, or an Euripides, than such individuals as
your father, because, theatres we have, but no tribunals for public
harangues.[6] You have hissed the tragedy of Cataline; when you shall
see Phaedrus played, you will probably agree that the part of Phaedrus,
in Racine, is infinitely superior to the model you have known in
Euripides. I hope, also, that you will agree our Molière surpasses your
Terence. By your permission, I shall have the honour of escorting you to
the opera, where you will be astonished to hear song in parts; that
again is an art unknown to you.[7] Here, madam, is a small telescope,
have the goodness to apply your eye to this glass, and look at that
house which is a league off.
_Tullia._--Immortal gods! the house is now at the end of the telescope,
and appears much larger than before.
_Duke._--Well, madam, it is by means of such a toy that we have
discovered new heavens, even as by means of a needle, we have become
acquainted with a new earth. Do you see this other varnished instrument,
in which is inserted a small glass tube? by this trifle, we are enabled
to discover the just proportion of the weight of the atmosphere. After
much error and uncertainty, there arose a man who discovered the first
principle of nature, the cause of weight, and who has demonstrated that
the stars weigh upon the earth, and the earth upon the stars. He has
also unthreaded the light of the sun, as ladies unthread a tissue of
gold.
_Tullia._--What, sir, is it to unthread?
_Duke._--Madam, the equivalent of this term will scarcely be found in
the orations of Cicero. It is to unweave a stuff, to draw out thread by
thread, so as to separate the gold. Thus has Newton done by the rays of
the sun, the stars also have submitted to him; and one Locke has
accomplished as much by the Human Understanding.
_Tullia._--You know a great deal for a duke and a peer of the realm; you
seem to me more learned than that literary man who wished me to think
his verses good, and you are far more polite.
_Duke._--Madam, I have been better brought up; but as to my knowledge
it is merely commonplace. Young people now, when they quit school, know
much more than all the philosophers of antiquity. It is only a pity that
we have, in Europe, substituted half-a-dozen imperfect jargons, for the
fine Latin language, of which your father made so noble a use; but with
such rude implements we have produced, even in the _belles lettres,_
some very fair works.
_Tullia._--The nations who succeeded the Romans must needs have lived
in a state of profound peace, and have enjoyed a constant succession of
great men, from my father's time until now, to have invented so many new
arts, and to have become acquainted so intimately with heaven and earth.
_Duke._--By no means, madam, we are ourselves, some of those barbarians,
who almost all came from Scythia, and destroyed your empire, and the
arts and sciences. We lived for seven or eight centuries like savages,
and to complete our barbarism, were inundated with a race of men termed
monks, who brutified, in Europe, that human species which you had
conquered and enlightened. But what will most astonish you is, that
in the latter ages of ignorance amongst these very monks, these very
enemies to civilization, nature nurtured some useful men. Some invented
the art of assisting the feeble sight of age; and others, by pounding
together nitre and charcoal, have furnished us with implements of war,
with which we might have exterminated the Scipios, Alexander, Caesar,
the Macedonian phalanxes, and all your legions; it is not that we
possess warriors more formidable than the Scipios, Alexander, and
Caesar, but that we have superior arms.[8]
_Tullia._--In you, I perceive united, the high breeding of a nobleman,
and the erudition of a man of (literary) consideration; you would have
been worthy of becoming a Roman senator.
_Duke._--Ah, madam, far more worthy are you of being at the head of our
court.
_Mad. de P._--In which case, this lady would prove a formidable rival to
me.
_Tullia._--Consult your beautiful mirrors made of sand, and you will
perceive you have nothing to fear from me. Well, sir, in the gentlest
manner in the world, you have informed me that your knowledge
(infinitely) transcends our own.
_Duke._--I said, madam, that the latter ages are better informed than
those which preceded them; at least no general revolution has utterly
destroyed all the monuments of antiquity: we have had horrible, but
temporary convulsions, and amid these storms, have been fortunate enough
to preserve the works of your father, and of some other great men: thus,
the sacred fire has never been utterly extinguished, and has in the end
produced an almost universal illumination. We despise the barbarous
scholastic systems, which have long had some influence among us, but
revere Cicero and all the ancients who have taught us to think. If we
possess other laws of physics than those of your times, we have no other
rules of eloquence, and this perhaps may settle the dispute between the
ancients and moderns.
(Every one agreed with the duke. Finally they went to the opera of
Castor and Pollux, with the words and music of which, Tullia was much
gratified, and she acknowledged such a spectacle to be extremely
superior to that of a combat of gladiators.[9])
_Great Marlow, Bucks._