listened to the animating conversation of Racine, or heard him read
aloud, with that spirit and deep pathos for which his reading was so
remarkable, his _Esther_ and _Alhalie_, previously to their performance
at St.-Cyr.

That she did not make his peace with the king, when he offended him by
writing an essay to prove that long wars, however likely to reflect
glory on a sovereign, were sure to entail misery on his subjects, shews
that either her influence over the mind of Louis was much less powerful
than has been believed, or that she was deficient in the feelings that
must have prompted her to exert it by pleading for him.

The ungenerous conduct of the king in banishing from his court a man
whose genius shed a purer lustre over it than all the battles Boileau
has sung, and for a cause that merited praise instead of displeasure,
has always appeared to me to be indicative of great meanness as well as
hardness of heart; and while lamenting the weakness of Racine,
originating in a morbid sensibility that rendered his disgrace at court
so painful and humiliating to the poet as to cause his death, I am
still less disposed to pardon the sovereign that could thus excite into
undue action a sensibility, the effects of which led its victim to the
grave.

The diamond-mounted _tabatiere_ now on my table once occupied a place
on that of the Marquise de Rambouillet, in that hotel so celebrated,
not only for the efforts made by its coterie towards refining the
manners and morals of her day, but the language also, until the
affectation to which its members carried their notions of purity,
exposed them to a ridicule that tended to subvert the influence they
had previously exercised over society.

Moliere--the inimitable Moliere--may have been permitted the high
distinction of taking a pinch of snuff from it, while planning his
_Precieuses Ridicules_, which, _malgre_ his disingenuous disavowal of
the satire being aimed at the Hotel Rambouillet, evidently found its
subject there. I cannot look at the snuff-box without being reminded of
the brilliant circle which its former mistress assembled around her,
and among which Moliere had such excellent opportunities of studying
the peculiarities of the class he subsequently painted.

Little did its members imagine, when he was admitted to it, the use he
would make of the privilege; and great must have been their surprise
and mortification, though not avowed, at the first representation of