frotte ses mains, il se baisse, il la voit de plus près, il ne l'a jamais vue si belle, il a le cœur épanoui de joie; il la quitte pour l'Orientale; de là, il va à la Veuve; il passe au Drap d'Or, de celle-ci à l'Agathe, d'où il revient à la Solitaire, où il se fixe, où il se lasse, où il s'assied, où il oublie de dîner; aussi est-elle nuancée, bordée, huilée, à pièces emportées; elle a un beau vase ou un beau calice; il la contemple, il l'admire; Dieu et la nature sont en tout cela ce qu'il n'admire point; il ne va pas plus loin que l'oignon de sa tulipe, qu'il ne livrerait pas pour mille écus, et qu'il donnera pour rien quand les tulipes seront néligées et que les œillets auront prévalu. Cet homme raisonnable, qui a une âme, qui a un culte et une religion, revient chez soi fatigué, affamé, mais fort content de sa journée: il a vu des tulipes."

"Les Caractères" is the title of La Bruyère's book; but its sub-title "Les Mours de ce Siècle"-gives a juster notion of its contents. The whole of society, as it appeared to the subtle and penetrating gaze of La Bruyère, flows through its pages. In them, Versailles rises before us, less in its outward

form than in its spiritual content-its secret, essential self. And the judgment which La Bruyère passes on this vision is one of withering scorn. His criticism is more convincing than La Rochefoucauld's because it is based upon a wider and a deeper foundation. The vanity which he saw around him was indeed the vanity of the Preacher-the emptiness, the insignificance, the unprofitableness, of worldly things. There was nothing too small to escape his terrible attention, and nothing too large. His arraignment passes from the use of rouge to the use of torture, from the hypocrisies of false devotion to the silly absurdities of eccentrics, from the inhumanity of princes, to the little habits of fools. The passage in which he describes the celebration of Mass in the Chapel of Versailles, where all the courtiers were to be seen turning their faces to the King's throne, and their backs to the altar of God, shows a spirit different indeed from that of Bossuet -a spirit not far removed from the undermining criticism of the eighteenth century itself. Yet La Bruyère was not a social reformer nor a political theorist: he was simply a moralist and an observer. He saw in a flash the condition of the French peasants

"Certains animaux farouches, des mâles et des femelles, répandus par la campagne, noirs, livides, et tout brulés du soleil, attachés à la terre qu'ils fouillent et qu'ils remuent avec une opiniâtreté invincible; ils ont comme une voix articulée, et, quand ils se lèvent sur leurs pieds, ils montrent une face humaine: et en effet ils sont des hommes❞—

saw the dreadful fact, noted it with all the intensity of his genius, and then passed on. He was not concerned with finding remedies for the evils of a particular society, but with exposing the underlying evils of all societies. He would have written as truthful and as melancholy a book if he had lived to-day.

La Bruyère, in the darkness of his pessimism, sometimes suggests Swift, especially in his sarcastically serious treatment of detail; but he was without the virulent bitterness of the great Dean. In fact his indictment owes much of its impressiveness to the sobriety with which it is presented. There is no rage, no strain, no over-emphasis; one feels as one reads that this is an impartial judge. And, more than that, one feels that the judge is not only a judge, but also a human being. It is

the human quality in La Bruyère's mind which gives his book its rare flavour, so that one seems to hear, in these printed words, across the lapse of centuries, the voice of a friend. At times he forgets his gloom and his misanthropy, and speaks with a strange depth of feeling on friendship or on love. "Un beau visage," he murmurs, "est le plus beau de tous les spectacles, et l'harmonie la plus douce est le son de voix de celle que l'on aime." And then-"Etre avec les gens qu'on aime, cela suffit; rêver, leur parler, ne leur parler point, penser à eux, penser à des choses plus indifférentes, mais auprès d'eux tout est égal.' How tender and moving the accent, yet how restrained! And was ever more profundity of intimacy distilled into a few simple words than here "Il y a du plaisir à rencontrer les yeux de celui à qui l'on vient de donner"? But then once more the old melancholy seizes him. Even love itself must end.-"On guérit comme on se console; on n'a pas dans le cœur de quoi toujours pleurer et toujours aimer." He is overwhelmed by the disappointments of life.-"Les choses les plus souhaitées n'arrivent point; ou, si elles arrivent, ce n'est ni dans le temps ni dans les circonstances où elles auraient fait un extrême plaisir." And life itself, what is it?

how does it pass?-"Il n'y a pour l'homme que trois événements: naître, vivre, et mourir; il ne se sent pas naître, il souffre à mourir, et il oublie de vivre."

The pages of La Bruyère-so brilliant and animated on the surface, so sombre in their fundamental sense contain the final summary-we might almost say the epitaph-of the great age of Louis XIV. Within a few years of the publication of his book in its complete form (1694), the epoch, which had begun in such a blaze of splendour a generation earlier, entered upon its ultimate phase of disaster and humiliation. The political ambitions of the overweening king were completely shattered; the genius of Marlborough annihilated the armies of France; and when peace came at last it came in ruin. The country was not only exhausted to the furthest possible point, its recuperation had been made wellnigh impossible by the fatal Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, which, in circumstances of the utmost cruelty, had driven into exile the most industrious and independent portion of the population. Poverty, discontent, tyranny, fanaticism-such was the legacy that Louis left to his country. Yet that was not quite all. Though, during the last years