in philosophy--mawkish in poetry, your
writers of the present day seem to think, with Boileau--

"'Souvent de tous nos maux la raison est le pire.'"

"Surely," cried Madame D'Anville, "you will allow De la Martine's poetry
to be beautiful?"

"I allow it," said he, "to be among the best you have; and I know
very few lines in your language equal to the two first stanzas in his
'Meditation on Napoleon,' or to those exquisite verses called 'Le
Lac;' but you will allow also that he wants originality and nerve. His
thoughts are pathetic, but not deep; he whines, but sheds no tears. He
has, in his imitation of Lord Byron, reversed the great miracle; instead
of turning water into wine, he has turned wine into water. Besides,
he is so unpardonably obscure. He thinks, with Bacchus--(you remember,
D'A--, the line in Euripides, which I will not quote), that 'there
is something august in the shades;' but he has applied this thought
wrongly--in his obscurity there is nothing sublime--it is the back
ground of a Dutch picture. It is only a red herring, or an old hat,
which he has invested with such pomposity of shadow and darkness."

"But his verses are so smooth," said Lady--.

"Ah!" answered Vincent.

"'Quand la rime enfin se trouve au bout des vers, Qu'importe que le
reste y soit mis des travers.'"

"Helas" said the Viscount D'A--t, an author of no small celebrity
himself; "I agree with you--we shall never again see a Voltaire or a
Rousseau."

"There is but little justice in those complaints, often as they are
made," replied Vincent. "You may not, it is true, see a Voltaire or a
Rousseau, but you will see their equals. Genius can never be exhausted
by one individual. In our country, the poets after Chaucer in the
fifteenth century complained of the decay of their art--they did
not anticipate Shakspeare. In Hayley's time, who ever dreamt of the
ascension of Byron? Yet Shakspeare and Byron came like the bridegroom
'in the dead of night;' and you have the same probability of
producing--not, indeed, another Rousseau, but a writer to do equal
honour to your literature."

"I think," said Lady--, "that Rousseau's 'Julie' is over-rated. I had
heard so much of 'La Nouvelle Heloise' when I was a girl, and been so
often told that it was destruction to read it, that I bought the book
the very day after I was married. I own to you that I could not get
through it."

"I am not surprised at it," answered Vincent; "but Rousseau is not t