mbly
are also passages of bravura previously rehearsed before ladies at
an evening entertainment. The American Ambassador, a practical man,
explains to Washington with sober irony the fine academic and literary
parade preceding the political tournament in public[4107].

"The speeches are made beforehand in a small society of young men and
women, among them generally the fair friend of the speaker is one, or
else the fair whom he means to make his friend,; and the society very
politely give their approbation, unless the lady who gives the tone to
that circle chances to reprehend something, which is of course altered,
if not amended."

It is not surprising, with customs of this kind, that professional
philosophers should become men of society. At no time or in any place
have they been so to the same extent, nor so habitually. The great
delight of a man of genius or of learning here, says an English
traveler, is to reign over a brilliant assembly of people of
fashion[4108]. Whilst in England they bury themselves morosely in
their books, living amongst themselves and appearing in society only
on condition of "doing some political drudgery," that of journalist or
pamphleteer in the service of a party, in France they dine out every
evening, and constitute the ornaments and amusement of the drawing-rooms
to which they resort to converse[4109]. There is not a house in which
dinners are given that has not its titular philosopher, and, later on,
its economist and man of science. In the various memoirs, and in the
collections of correspondence, we track them from one drawing room to
another, from one chateau to another, Voltaire to Cirey at Madame
du Chatelet's, and then home, at Ferney where he has a theater and
entertains all Europe; Rousseau to Madame d'Epinay's, and M. de
Luxembourg's; the Abbe Barthelemy to the Duchesse de Choiseul's;
Thomas, Marmontel and Gibbon to Madame Necker's; the encyclopedists to
d'Holbach's ample dinners, to the plain and discreet table of Madame
Geoffrin, and to the little drawing room of Mademoiselle de L'Espinasse,
all belonging to the great central state drawing-room, that is to say,
to the French Academy, where each newly elected member appears to parade
his style and obtain from a polished body his commission of master in
the art of discourse. Such a public imposes on an author the obligation
of being more a writer than a philosopher. The thinker is expected to
concern himself with his senten