robust and healthful moral constitution which can bear with every
variety of social life, and estimate calmly the balance of our moral
fortunes. Trial and experience had left him that true philosopher who
is too wise to be an optimist, too just to be a misanthrope. He enjoyed
life with sober judgment, and pursued the path most suited to himself,
without declaring it to be the best for others. He was a little hard,
perhaps, upon the errors that belong to weakness and conceit--not to
those that have their source in great natures or generous thoughts.
Among his characteristics was a profound admiration for England. His
own country he half loved, yet half disdained. The impetuosity and
levity of his compatriots displeased his sober and dignified notions.
He could not forgive them (he was wont to say) for having made the two
grand experiments of popular revolution and military despotism in vain.
He sympathised neither with the young enthusiasts who desired a
republic, without well knowing the numerous strata of habits and customs
upon which that fabric, if designed for permanence, should be built--nor
with the uneducated and fierce chivalry that longed for a restoration of
the warrior empire--nor with the dull and arrogant bigots who connected
all ideas of order and government with the ill-starred and worn-out
dynasty of the Bourbons. In fact, GOOD SENSE was with him the
/principium et fons/ of all theories and all practice. And it was this
quality that attached him to the English. His philosophy on this head
was rather curious.

"Good sense," said he one day to Maltravers, as they were walking to and
fro at De Montaigne's villa, by the margin of the lake, "is not a merely
intellectual attribute. It is rather the result of a just equilibrium
of all our faculties, spiritual and moral. The dishonest, or the toys
of their own passions, may have genius; but they rarely, if ever, have
good sense in the conduct of life. They may often win large prizes, but