he
less a genius for all that: there is no story to bear out the style,
and he himself is right when he says 'ce livre convient a tres peu de
lecteurs.' One letter would delight every one--four volumes of them
are a surfeit--it is the toujours perdrix. But the chief beauty of that
wonderful conception of an empassioned and meditative mind is to be
found in the inimitable manner in which the thoughts are embodied, and
in the tenderness, the truth, the profundity of the thoughts themselves:
when Lord Edouard says, 'c'est le chemin des passions qui m'a conduit
a la philosophie,' he inculcates, in one simple phrase, a profound and
unanswerable truth. It is in these remarks that nature is chiefly found
in the writings of Rousseau: too much engrossed in himself to be deeply
skilled in the characters of others, that very self-study had yet given
him a knowledge of the more hidden recesses of the heart. He could
perceive at once the motive and the cause of actions, but he wanted the
patience to trace the elaborate and winding progress of their effects.
He saw the passions in their home, but he could not follow them abroad.
He knew mankind in the general, but not men in the detail. Thus, when he
makes an aphorism or reflection, it comes home at once to you as true;
but when he would analyze that reflection, when he argues, reasons, and
attempts to prove, you reject him as unnatural, or you refute him
as false. It is then that he partakes of that manie commune which he
imputes to other philosophers, 'de nier ce qui est, et d'expliquer ce
qui n'est pas.'"

There was a short pause. "I think," said Madame D'Anville, "that it is
in those pensees which you admire so much in Rousseau, that our authors
in general excel."

"You are right," said Vincent, "and for this reason--with you les gens
de letters are always les gens du monde. Hence their quick perceptions
are devoted to men as well as to books. They make observations acutely,
and embody them with grace; but it is worth remarking, that the same
cause which produced the aphorism, frequently prevents its being
profound. These literary gens du monde have the tact to observe, but not
the patience, perhaps not the time, to investigate. They make the maxim,
but they never explain to you the train of reasoning which led to it.
Hence they are more brilliant than true. An English writer would not
dare to make a maxim, involving, perhaps, in two lines, one of the most
important of moral tr