after it happened, and read his account of the circumstances We may smile; and so we may too when our annals tell that on the very day when King Philip Augustus died at Mantes, Pope ordered publicly solemnized his funeral rites/ and that the same should be done throughout Itk For the authority of these witnesses is perhaps not weighty enough to restrain uS/But what when Plutarch, after citing several examples from antiquity, tells us that, in Domitiads time, to his certain knowledge, the news of a battle lost by Antonius in Germany was made public in Rome, many days? journey awa and spread all around the actual day of the defeat? if on And Caesar maintains that the has very frequently preceded report the event, shall we that these simple men have let them- say selves be taken in like the vulgar, being not so clear-sighted as we? Can any mind be clearer, livelier, or more discriminating than Pliny's, when he chooses to bring it into play, or any less prone to be lightly swayed? Setting aside the excellence of his learning, by which setless store, in which of these two quali ties do we in any way surpass him? And the smallest yet very schoolboy can convict him of falsehood, and give him a lesson on the pro ress of nature?s works.