a
woman as a woman; a tradesman as a tradesman. We are often hurt by the
brutality and sluggish conceptions of the vulgar; not considering that
some there must be to be hewers of wood and drawers of water, and that
cultivated genius, or even any great refinement and delicacy in their
moral feelings, would be a real misfortune to them.

Let us then study the philosophy of the human mind. The man who is
master of this science will know what to expect from every one. From
this man, wise advice; from that, cordial sympathy; from another, casual
entertainment. The passions and inclinations of others are his tools,
which he can use with as much precision as he would the mechanical
powers; and he can as readily make allowance for the workings of vanity,
or the bias of self-interest in his friends, as for the power of
friction, or the irregularities of the needle.

A DIALOGUE OF THE DEAD

BETWEEN HELEN AND MADAME MAINTENON

_Helen_--Whence comes it, my dear Madame Maintenon, that beauty, which
in the age I lived in produced such extraordinary effects, has now lost
almost all its power?

_Maintenon_--I should wish first to be convinced of the fact, before I
offer to give you a reason for it.

_Helen_--That will be very easy; for there is no occasion to go any
further than our own histories and experience to prove what I advance.
You were beautiful, accomplished, and fortunate; endowed with every
talent and every grace to bend the heart of man and mold it to your
wish; and your schemes were successful; for you raised yourself from
obscurity and dependence to be the wife of a great monarch.--But what is
this to the influence my beauty had over sovereigns and nations! I
occasioned a long ten-years' war between the most celebrated heroes of
antiquity; contending kingdoms disputed the honor of placing me on their
respective thrones; my story is recorded by the father of verse; and my
charms make a figure even in the annals of mankind. You were, it is
true, the wife of Louis XIV., and respected in his court, but you
occasioned no wars; you are not spoken of in the history of France,
though you furnished materials for the memoirs of a court. Are the love
and admiration that were paid you merely as an amiable woman to be
compared with the enthusiasm I inspired, and the boundless empire I
obtained over all that was celebrated, great, or powerful in the age
I lived in?

_Maintenon_--All this, my dear Helen, has a splendid appea