The judgment the reader will be most inclined to
adopt will perhaps be either that of Mr. Hallam, "Con-
cise and energetic in expression, reduced to those
short aphorisms which leave much to the reader's
acuteness and yet save his labour, not often obscure,
and never wearisome, an evident generalisation of
long experience, without pedantry, without method,
without deductive reasonings, yet wearing an appear-
ance at least of profundity; they delight the intelli-
gent though indolent man of the world, and must be
read with some admiration by the philosopher . . . .
yet they bear witness to the contracted observation
and the precipitate inferences which an intercourse
with a single class of society scarcely fails to generate."
Or that of Addison, who speaks of Rochefoucauld
"as the great philosopher for administering consola-
tion to the idle, the curious, and the worthless part of
mankind."

We are fortunately in possession of materials such
as rarely exist to enable us to form a judgment of
Rochefoucauld's character. We have, with a vanity
that could only exist in a Frenchman, a description
or portrait of himself, of his own painting, and one of
those inimitable living sketches in which his great
enemy, Cardinal De Retz, makes all the chief actors in
the court of the regency of Anne of Austria pass
across the stage before us.

We will first look on the portrait Rochefoucauld has