oyed on a soldier who was threatening the saint. When
this fit of enthusiastic abstraction had passed, Carracci ran and
embraced him, acknowledging that Domenichino had been that day his
master; and that he had learnt from him the true manner to succeed in
catching the expression--that great pride of the painter's art.

Thus different are the sentiments of the intelligent and the
unintelligent on the same subject. A Carracci embraced a kindred genius
for what a Le Clerc or a Selden would have ridiculed.

Poets, I confess, frequently indulge _reveries_, which, though they
offer no charms to their friends, are too delicious to forego. In the
ideal world, peopled with all its fairy inhabitants, and ever open to
their contemplation, they travel with an unwearied foot. Crebillon, the
celebrated tragic poet, was enamoured of solitude, that he might there
indulge, without interruption, in those fine romances with which his
imagination teemed. One day when he was in a deep reverie, a friend
entered hastily: "Don't disturb me," cried the poet; "I am enjoying a
moment of happiness: I am going to hang a villain of a minister, and
banish another who is an idiot."

Amongst the anti-poetical may be placed the father of the great monarch
of Prussia. George the Second was not more the avowed enemy of the
muses. Frederic would not suffer the prince to read verses; and when he
was desirous of study, or of the conversation of literary men, he was
obliged to do it secretly. Every poet was odious to his majesty. One
day, having observed some lines written on one of the doors of the
palace, he asked a courtier their signification. They were explained to
him; they were Latin verses composed by Wachter, a man of letters, then
resident at Berlin. The king immediately sent for the bard, who came
warm with the hope of receiving a reward for his ingenuity. He was
astonished, however, to hear the king, in a violent passion, accost him,
"I order you immediately to quit this city and my kingdom." Wachter
took refuge in Hanover. As little indeed was this anti-poetical monarch
a friend to philosophers. Two or three such kings might perhaps renovate
the ancient barbarism of Europe. Barratier, the celebrated child, was
presented to his majesty of Prussia as a prodigy of erudition; the king,
to mortify our ingenious youth, coldly asked him, "If he knew the law?"
The learned boy was constrained to acknowledge that he knew nothing of
the law. "Go," was th