his inferences from consciousness; Madame de Sevigne, the epistolary
queen, had for her central motive of all speculation and gossip the love
of her daughter; Madame Guyon eliminated her tenets from the ecstasy of
self-love; Rochefoucauld derived a set of philosophical maxims from the
lessons of mere worldly disappointment; Calvin sought to reform society
through the stern bigotry of a private creed; La Bruyere elaborated
generic characters from the acute, but narrow observation of artificial
society; Boileau established a classical standard of criticism suggested
by personal taste, which ignored the progress of the human mind.

The redeeming grace of the nation is to be found in its wholesome sense
of the enjoyable and the available in ordinary life, in its freedom
from the discontent which elsewhere is born of avarice and unmitigated
materialism. The love of pleasing, the influence of women, and a
frivolous temper everywhere and on all occasions signalize them. "Why,
people laugh at everything here!" naively exclaimed the young Duchess of
Burgundy, on her arrival at the French court.

The amount of commodities taken by French people on a journey, and the
cool self-satisfaction with which they are appropriated as occasion
demands, give a stranger the most vivid idea of sensual egotism. The
_pate_, the long roll of bread, the sour wine, the lap-dog, the snuff,
and the night-cap, which transform the car or carriage into a refectory
and boudoir, with the chatter, snoring, and shifting of legs, make an
interior scene for the novice, especially on a night-jaunt, compared to
which the humblest of Dutch pictures are refined and elegant.

The intrinsic diversity and the national relations between the French
and English are curiously illustrated by their respective history and
literature. Compare, for instance, the plays of Shakspeare, which