usually marked and defined. She had kindness, but very little sensibility; she was beneficent, but without one of the charms of benevolence ; eager to aid the unfortunate, but without seeing them, for fear of being moved by them; a sure, faithful, even an officious friend, but timid, disturbed, whilst in the very act of serving her friends, with the fear of compromising either her credit or her repose. She was simple in her tastes, in her dress, in her furniture, but nice in her simplicity, having the delicacies of luxury in all their refinement, but nothing of their brilliancy nor of their vanity. Modest in her air, in her carriage, in her manners, but with a fund of pride, and even a little vain glory. Nothing flattered her more than her commerce with the great. At their houses, she saw them but rarely; there she was not at her'ease; but she had the secret of attracting them to hers by a coquetry imperceptibly flattering; and in the easy, natural, half respectful and half-familiar air with which she received them, I thought I saw an extreme address. Always free with them, always on the verge of propriety, it was never overstepped. To be in favour with heaven, without being out of favour with her society, she used to indulge in a kind of clandestine devotion: she used to go to mass as one goes to an intrigue; she had an apartment in a convent of nuns, and a tribune in the church of the Capucins, but with as much mystery as the gallant women of that day had their private houses for intrigue. All kind of state disgusted her. Her greatest care was to make no noise. She was ardently desirous of celebrity, and of acquiring a great consideration in the world; but she would have it tranquil. A little like the lunatic who fancied himself made of glass, she avoided, as so many rocks, all that could expose her to the shock of human passions; and thence her timidity, her faint-heartedness, whenever a good office required courage. The man for whom, with a full heart, she would have freely opened her purse, was not equally sure of the support of her tongue, and on this point she flattered herself with ingenious excuses. For example, it was her maxim that, when we hear our friends abused in company, we should never undertake warmly their defence, nor contend with the defamer; for that was the sure way to irritate the viper, and refine its venom. She used to say that a man fhould praise his friends but very temperately, and for their qualities, not for their actions; for on hearing it said of some one that he is sincere and beneficent, each can say to himself, I too am beneficent and sincere. "But," said she, "if you cite of him a laudable act, an act of virtue, since each cannot say that he has done as much, he takes this praise for a reproach, and seeks to depress it." What she most esteemed in a friend, was an attentive prudence never to compromise her; and as an example, she used to cite Bernard, the man of all others most coldly precise in his actions and his words. "With him," used she to say, 66 one may be tranquil; no one complains of him; it is never necessary to defend him." This was a hint for heads a little lively like mine, for there were more than one such in her society; and if any one of those she loved, happened to be in danger or in trouble, whatever might be the cause, and whether he were right or wrong, her first impulse was to accuse him herself: on which

point

point perhaps too warmly, I one day took the liberty of telling her that her friends should be all infallible and always happy.'

Next comes D'Alembert:

Of this society the gayest man, the most animated, the most amusing in his gaiety, was d'Alembert. After having passed his morning in algebraic calculations, and in solving the problems of merchanics or astronomy, he came from his study like a boy just loose from school, seeking only to enjoy himself; and by the lively and pleasant turn that his mind, so luminous, so solid, so profound, then assumed, he soon made us forget the philosopher and the man of science, to admire in him all the qualities that can delight and engage. source of this natural gaiety was a pure mind, free from passion, contented with itself, and in the daily enjoyment of some new truth that recompensed and crowned his labours; a privilege which the mathematics exclusively possess, and which no other kind of study can completely obtain.'

Marivaux is thus delineated:

The

• Marivaux would have been very glad to have had this jovial humour too; but he had a business in his head that incessantly preoccupied him, and gave him a sullen' air. As he had acquired by his works the reputation of a subtile and refined wit, he thought himself obliged to give perpetual proofs of this wit, and he was continually on the watch for ideas susceptible of opposition or analysis, in order to turn or wind them as his fancy dictated. He would agree that such a thing was true as far as a certain point, or in a certain view; but there was always some restriction, some distinction to make, which no one perceived but himself. This exertion of the attention was laborious to him, and often painful to others; but it sometimes gave birth to happy perceptions and brilliant flashes of genius. Yet it was easy to discover, by the inquietude of his looks, that he was in pain about the success he already had, or about that he was about to obtain. There never was, I believe, self love more delicate, more wayward, or more fearful; but as he carefully humoured that of others, we respected his; and we only pitied him that he could not resolve to be simple and natural.'

We remark great discrimination in the following character:

Helvétius, preoccupied with his ambition of literary_celebrity, came to us, his head heated with his morning's work. To write a book that should be distinguished in his age, his first care had been to seek for some new truth to publish, or some bold and new idea to produce and support. But as new and fruitful truths have been infinitely rare for the last two thousand years, he had taken for his thesis the paradox which he has developed in his work De l'Esprit. Whether it were that by force of contention he had persuaded himself of what he wished to persuade others, or whether he were still struggling against his own doubts, and sought to conquer them, we were amused at seeing him bring successively on the carpet the questions that occupied or the difficulties that embarrassed him; and after having af

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forded

forded him for some time the pleasure of hearing them discussed, we engaged him to suffer himself to be carried along with the current of Our conversation. He then gave himself wholly to it, with infinite warmth, as simple, as natural, as ingeniously sincere in his familiar converse as you see him sytematic and sophistical in his writings. Nothing less resembles the simplicity of his character and of his habi tual life, than the premeditated and factitious singularity of his works; and this want of harmony will always be found between the manners and opinions of those who fatigue themselves with imagining strange things. Helvétius had in his soul the complete contrary of what he has said. There never was a better man: liberal, generous, without ostentation, and beneficent because he was good, he conceived the idea of calumniating all honest men and himself, by giving to all moral actions no motive but self love. Abstracted from his writings, we loved him such as he really was, and you will soon see what a resource his house was for men of letters.'

Mademoiselle Lespinasse, the object of D'Alembert's adoration, must not be overlooked; :

I cannot mention the graces without speaking of one who had all their gifts both in mind and in language, and who was the only wo man that Madame Geoffrin had admitted to her dinners of men of letters; it was the friend of d'Alembert, Mademoiselle Lespinasse: a wonderful composition of correctness, reason, prudence, with the liveliest fancy, the most ardent soul, the most inflammable imagination that has existed since the days of Sappho. That fire that circulated in her veins, and which gave to her mind such activity, brilliancy, and so many charms, has prematurely consumed her. I will tell you hereafter what regret her loss occasioned. Here I only mark the place she occupied at our dinners, where her presence excited inexpressible interest. The continued object of attention, whether she listened or whether she spoke herself (and no one spoke better) without coquetry, she inspired us with the innocent desire of pleasing her; without prudery, she made freedom feel how far it might venture, without disturbing modesty or wounding decorum.'

We should transcrib- the greater part of this second volume, if we admitted every agreeable passage that occurs in it; yet we must find room for the extraordinary portrait of the Count de Creutz, (a Swede.)

One of the men to whom I have been most dear, and whom I have most tenderly loved, has been the Count de Creutz. He too was of the literary society and dinners of Madame Geoffrin; less eager to please, less occupied with the care of attracting attention, often pensive, still oftener absent, but the most charm ing of the convivial circle, when without distraction he gave himself freely to us. It was to him that nature had really given sensibility, warmth, the delicacy of moral sentiment and of that of taste; the love of all that is beautiful, and the passion of genius as well as that of virtue: it was to him that she had granted the gift of expressing and painting in touches of fire, all that had struck his imagination

ΤΟ

imagination or vividly seized on his soul: never was a man born a poet, if this man were not so. Still young, his mind ornamented with a prodigious variety of information, speaking French like ourselves, and almost all the languages of Europe like his own, without reckoning the learned languages, versed in all kinds of ancient and modern literature, talking of chymistry as a chimist, of natural history as a pupil of Linneus, and singularly of Sweden and of Spain. as a curious observer of the properties of climates and of their divers productions; he was for us a source of knowledge, embellished by the most brilliant elocution.'

Besides this literary assembly, Mad. Geoffrin had a dinner for artists, to which Marmontel was admitted; and he speaks with raptures of her petits soupers, where he was also a constant guest.

Other societies, of a more dangerous kind, occupied part of his time; and in one of them an adventure occurred which cost him his liberty, at least for a time. A parody on some passages of Corneille, in which the Duke D'Aumont was ridiculed, was composed in one of these parties of pleasure by Cury, and retained by the unlucky memory of our author. He repeated it in another party, and was the next day denounced to the Duke, and by him to the King, as the author of the satire. In consequence of this affair, notwithstanding his address in vindicating himself at an interview with the Duke de Choiseul, as he refused to give up the author of the satire, he was sent to the Bastille. This prison, so terrible to others, was made very comfortable to Marmontel; and he even began to translate Lucan during his confinement. On his release, which took place in eleven days, he lost his patent for the Mercure: this, however, he might have regained, if he would have disclosed the author of the parody: but the weakness or duplicity of his patroness, Mad. de Pompadour, finally deprived him of this benefit.

We cannot follow the author in his agreeable trip to Bourdeaux, nor in the tragi-comic history of poor Lefranc Pompignan, who was stung to death by the Parisian wits. In the course of this tour, Marmontel visited the canal of Languedoc, of which he speaks in terms of just admiration. We select a very striking account of the bason of St. Ferréol, the source of the canal, and the reservoir of its waters.

This bason, formed as I have said by a circle of mountains, is two thousand, two hundred, and twenty-two fathoms in circumference, and one hundred and sixty in depth. The narrow pass of the mountains, that encompass it, is closed by a wall six and thirty fathoms thick. When it is full, its waters flow over in cascades; but in dry seasons these overflowings cease, and the water is then drawn from the bottom of the reservoir: the means employed for that purpose, are these:

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In the side of the mountain, two long vaults are constructed at the distance of forty feet from each other, which run under the reservoir. To one of these vaults, three brass tubes are vertically adapted, whose bore equals that of the largest cannon, and by which, when their cocks are opened, the water of the reservoir falls into an aqueduct constructed along the second vault; so that, when you penetrate to these tubes, you have one hundred and sixty feet of water above your head. We did not fail to advance thus far, by the glimmering light our conductor carried for us in a chafing-dish; for no ordinary light could have sustained the commotion of the air that the explosion of the waters soon excited under the vault; when, suddenly, with a strong iron lever, our man turned the cock of one of the three tubes, then that of the second, and then that of the third. At the opening of the first, the most dreadful thunder echoed beneath the vault; and twice, peal on peal, this roar redoubled. I thought I saw the bottom of the reservoir burst, and the mountains around shake from their bases, and falling on our heads. The profound emotion, and, to speak the truth, the affright, this noise had created, did not prevent us from going to see what was passing under the second vault. We penetrated there, amid the sound of this subterraneous thunder; and we saw three torrents rush from the three tubes. I know of no motion in nature, that can be compared to the violence of the column of water, that here escaped from the reservoir in floods of foam. The eye could not follow it; it could not be looked on without giddiness. The border of the aqueduct, in which this torrent flowed, was but four feet wide; it was covered with freestone, polished, wet, and very slippery. There we were, standing, pale, motionless; and if our foot had slipped, the water of the torrent would have rolled us a thousand paces in the twinkling of an eye. We returned shuddering; and we felt the rocks, which support the bason, tremble at the distance of a hundred paces.'

Here we are again agreeably introduced to Voltaire, (whom the author visited at Ferney,) and here this illustrious writer speaks without disguise or ceremony. A very curicus anecdote of Rousseau is related on this occasion, which it seems incumbent on us to notice, because it may guard some of our young readers against the seduction of his eloquen: but dangerous writings:

'As we were talking of Geneva, he asked me what I thought of Rousseau. I answered that, in his writings, he appeared to me only an eloquent sophist; and, in his character, only a false cynick, who would burst with pride and indignation if the world ceased to look at him. As to the earnest desire he had conceived of giving a fair exterior to the part he acted, I knew the anecdete, and I told it to

him.

In one of the letters of Rousseau to M. de Malesherbes, you have seen in what a transport of inspiration and enthusiasm he had conceived the project of declaring himself against the arts and sciences. "I was going,' says he, in the recital he has made of this miracle, going to see Diderot then a prisoner at Vincennes; I had in my poc

"I was

ket