ees from sense of shame."

A set of pure idlers appear loitering about. Annius, an antiquary, begs
to have them made over to him, to turn into virtuosos. Mummius, another
antiquary, quarrels with him, and the goddess reconciles them. The
minute naturalists follow "thick as locusts."

"Each with some wondrous gift approach'd the Power,
A nest, a toad, a fungus, or a flower."

A florist lodges a heavy complaint against an entomologist. The singular
beauty of the pleading on both sides has often been noticed, and by the
best critics, from Thomas Gray to Thomas De Quincey.

"The first thus open'd: Hear thy suppliant's call,
Great Queen, and common mother of us all!
Fair from its humble bed I rear'd this flow'r,
Suckl'd, and cheer'd with air, and sun, and show'r,
Soft on the paper ruff its leaves I spread,
Bright with the gilded button tipt its head.
Then thron'd in glass, and nam'd it Caroline:
Each maid cry'd, Charming; and each youth, Divine!
Did Nature's pencil ever blend such rays,
Such vary'd light in one promiscuous blaze?
Now prostrate! dead! behold that Caroline:
No maid cries charming! and no youth divine!
And lo the wretch! whose vile, whose insect lust
Laid this gay daughter of the Spring in dust,
Oh punish him, or to th' Elysian shades
Dismiss my soul, where no carnation fades.
He ceas'd, and wept. With innocence of mien
The accus'd stood forth, and thus address'd the Queen:
"Of all th' enamel'd race, whose silv'ry wing
Waves to the tepid zephyrs of the spring,
Or swims along the fluid atmosphere,
Once brightest shin'd this child of heat and air.
I saw, and started from its vernal bow'r
The rising game, and chas'd from flow'r to flow'r.
It fled, I follow'd, now in hope, now pain;
It stopt, I stopt; it mov'd, I mov'd again.
At last it fixed, 'twas on what plant it pleas'd,
And where it fixed, the beauteous bird I seiz'd:
Rose, or carnation, was below my care;
I meddle, Goddess! only in my sphere.
I tell the naked feet without disguise,
And, to excuse it, need but show the prize;
Whose spoils this paper offers to our eye,
Fair ev'n death! this peerless butterfly."

The mighty mother cannot find it in her heart to pronounce a decision
which must aggrieve one of such a devoted pair. She extols them both,
and makes over to their joint care and tuition the _faineants_
aforesaid. The subject leads her into a more serious stra