The Russian secretary astonished us with a recital of the great establishments they were forming in Russia. It was asked why people were, in general, more fond of reading the history of Charles XII., who passed his life in destroying, than that of Peter the Great, who consumed his in creating? On this we concluded that weakness and a frivolous turn of mind are the causes of this preference; that Charles XII. was the Don Quixote, and Peter, the Solon of the North; that superficial understandings prefer a wild, extravagant heroism to the great views of a legislator; that the particulars of the foundation of a town are less pleasing to them than the rashness of a man who, at the head of only his domestics, braves an army of ten thousand Turks; and that, in short, most readers love amusement better than instruction. Thence it is that a hundred women read "The Thousand and One Arabian Nights" for one that reads two chapters of Locke.
What was not talked of at this supper—of which I shall long retain the remembrance? It was also in course to say a word of the actors and actresses, that eternal subject of the table-talk of Versailles and of Paris. It was agreed that a good declaimer was as rare as a good poet. For my part, I must own that Plato's banquet could not have given me more pleasure than that of Monsieur and Madame Andrew.
Our very pretty gentlemen and our very fine
