line in Euripides, which I will not quote), that 'there is something
august in the shades;' but he has applied this thought wrongly--in his
obscurity there is nothing sublime--it is the back ground of a Dutch
picture. It is only a red herring, or an old hat, which he has invested
with such pomposity of shadow and darkness."

"But his verses are so smooth," said Lady--.

"Ah!" answered Vincent.

"'Quand la rime enfin se trouve au bout des vers,
Qu'importe que le reste y soit mis des travers.'"

"Helas" said the Viscount D'A--t, an author of no small celebrity
himself; "I agree with you--we shall never again see a Voltaire or a
Rousseau."

"There is but little justice in those complaints, often as they are
made," replied Vincent. "You may not, it is true, see a Voltaire or a
Rousseau, but you will see their equals. Genius can never be exhausted by
one individual. In our country, the poets after Chaucer in the fifteenth
century complained of the decay of their art--they did not anticipate
Shakspeare. In Hayley's time, who ever dreamt of the ascension of Byron?
Yet Shakspeare and Byron came like the bridegroom 'in the dead of night;'
and you have the same probability of producing--not, indeed, another
Rousseau, but a writer to do equal honour to your literature."

"I think," said Lady--, "that Rousseau's 'Julie' is over-rated. I had
heard so much of 'La Nouvelle Heloise' when I was a girl, and been so
often told that it was destruction to read it, that I bought the book the