him which, for tenderness, equanimity, cheerfulness, grace, sobriety,
and hope, are not surpassed in prose literature. "One of the noblest
qualities in our nature," he said, "is that we are able so easily to
dispense with greater perfection."

"Magnanimity owes no account to prudence of its
motives."

"To do great things a man must live as though he
had never to die."

"The first days of spring have less grace than the
growing virtue of a young man."

"You must rouse in men a consciousness of their
own prudence and strength if you would raise their
character."

Just as Tocqueville said: "He who despises mankind will never get the
best out of either others or himself."[1]

[Footnote 1: The reader who cares to know more about Vauvenargues will
find a chapter on him in the present writer's _Miscellanies_, vol.
ii.]

The best known of Vauvenargues' sayings, as it is the deepest and the
broadest, is the far-reaching sentence already quoted, that "Great
thoughts come from the heart." And this is the truth that shines out
as we watch the voyagings of humanity from the "wide, grey, lampless
depths" of time. Those have been greatest in thought who have been