If there is one thing women do not understand it is the selection, the ordering, and the treatment of domestic servants.

The mere man manages much better.
But, that aside, Antoinette has spoiled me for Judith's cook's cookery.
I breathed a little sigh of content and summoned Stenson to inform him that I would dine at home.
A great package of books from a second-hand bookseller arrived during dinner.

Among them were the nine volumes of Pietro Gianone's _Istoria Civile del Regno di Napoli_, a copy of which I ought to have possessed long ago.

It is dedicated to the "Most Puissant and Felicitous Prince Charles VI, the Great, by God crowned Emperor of the Romans, King of Germany, Spain, Naples, Hungary, Bohemia, Sicily, _etcetera_." Is there a living soul in God's universe who has a spark of admiration for this most puissant and most felicitous monarch crowned by God Emperor and King of the greater part of Europe (and docked of most of his pretensions by the Treaty of Utrecht)?
We only remember the forcible-feeble person by his Pragmatic Sanction, and otherwise his personality has left in history not the remotest trace.

And yet, on the 12th February, 1723, a profoundly erudite, subtle, and picturesque historian grovels before the man and subscribes himself "Of your Holy Caesarean and Catholic Majesty the most humble and most devoted and most obsequious vassal and slave Pietro Gianone." What ruthless judgments posterity passes on once enormous reputations! In Gianone's admirable introduction we hear of "_il celebre Arthur Duck, il quale oltro a' con confini della sua Inghilterra volle in altri a piu lontani Paesi andav rintracciando l'uso a l'autorita delle romane leggi ne' nuovi domini de' Principi cristiani; e di quelle di ciascheduna Nazione volle ancora aver conto: le ricerco nella vicina Scozia, e nell' Ibernia; trapasso nella Francia, e nella Spagna; in Germania, in Italia, a nel nostro Regno ancora: si stese in oltre in Polonia, Boemia, in Ungheria, Danimarca, nella Svezia, ed in piu remote parti_." A devil of a fellow this celebrated English Arthur Duck, who besides writing a learned treatise _De Usu et Auth.Jur.Civ.Rom.in Dominiis Principum Christianorum_, was a knight, a member of Parliament, chancellor of the diocese of London, and a master in chancery.