e things that we have done.'"

"I wonder," said I, "that some of Dr. Strauss's countrymen have not
proved him to be an imaginary being,--a myth. It were very easy to do
it on such principles."

"It has been done long since," said Harrington, "by Wolfgang Menzel."

"Thank you," said I, in conclusion, "you have clearly proved that a
true history may plausibly be shown to be false."

"And therefore, my dear uncle, you will, I hope, justify my scepticism
in all such matters," said he archly. I acknowledge, as Socrates says,
that I felt for a moment as if I had received a sudden blow, and
hardly knew what to say. "No," said I at last, "unless you can justify
Dr. Strauss's theory of historical criticism, of which you yourself
acknowledge you have doubts. With that any thing may be proved false;
meantime it appears that the facts to which it is applied may be
undoubtedly true."

____

On retiring to my chamber, I mused for some time on the facility with
which man's ingenuity or inclinations can pervert any facts which he
resolves shall be otherwise than they are. "Dubious as is the EVIDENCE,"
Harrington was fond of saying, "I distrust the Judas still more"; an
admission, I told him, of which I should one day remind him. Tired at
last of this unpleasant theme, I took up a volume of Leibnitz's
Theodicee, which happened to lie on the table, and read those striking
passages towards the conclusion in which he represents Theodore (reluctant
to accept the iron theory of necessity) as privileged with a peep into
a number of the infinite possible worlds; from which he has the
satisfaction of seeing that, bad as is the lot of Sextus in the best
of all possible worlds, that lot, Sextus being what he is, could not
possibly be any better; a queer consolation, by the way, till we know
why Sextus must be what he is, or why Sextus must be at all.

I sank off to slumber in my chair, no doubt under the soporific effects
of this metaphysical morphine. While I slept, the previous discussions
of the day and the dose of Theodicee operating together suggested a very
strange dream, which I shall here record. It shall be entitled

THE PARADISE OF FOOLS.

Methought I saw a grave and very venerable old man with a long white
beard enter my chamber, and quietly seat himself opposite to me.
Instead of asking who he was and how he came there, nothing seemed
more natural and proper. We all know how easily in dreams the mind
dispenses with all cere