d by
achievement, it was filled to the very full. His genius blazes like a
meteor in the records of English poetry; and some of that splendor
gleams about the lovely woman who turned him away from vice and folly
and made him worthy of his historic ancestry, of his country, and of
himself.

THE STORY OF MME. DE STAEL

Each century, or sometimes each generation, is distinguished by some
especial interest among those who are given to fancies--not to call
them fads. Thus, at the present time, the cultivated few are taken up
with what they choose to term the "new thought," or the "new
criticism," or, on the other hand, with socialistic theories and
projects. Thirty years ago, when Oscar Wilde was regarded seriously by
some people, there were many who made a cult of estheticism. It was
just as interesting when their leader--

Walked down Piccadilly with a poppy or a lily
In his medieval hand,

or when Sir William Gilbert and Sir Arthur Sullivan guyed him as
Bunthorne in "Patience."

When Charles Kingsley was a great expounder of British common sense,
"muscular Christianity" was a phrase which was taken up by many
followers. A little earlier, Puseyism and a primitive form of socialism
were in vogue with the intellectuals. There are just as many different
fashions in thought as in garments, and they come and go without any
particular reason. To-day, they are discussed and practised everywhere.
To-morrow, they are almost forgotten in the rapid pursuit of something
new.

Forty years before the French Revolution burst forth with all its
thunderings, France and Germany were affected by what was generally
styled "sensibility." Sensibility was the sister of sentimentality and
the half-sister of sentiment. Sentiment is a fine thing in itself. It
is consistent with strength and humor and manliness; but sentimentality
and sensibility are poor cheeping creatures that run scuttering along
the ground, quivering and whimpering and asking for perpetual sympathy,
which they do not at all deserve.

No one need be ashamed of sentiment. It simply gives temper to the
blade, and mellowness to the intellect. Sensibility, on the other hand,
is full of shivers and shakes and falsetto notes and squeaks. It is, in
fact, all humbug, just as sentiment is often all truth.

Therefore, to find an interesting phase of human folly, we may look
back to the years which lie between 1756 and 1793 as the era of
sensibility. T