agraph its fit ending, the thought allows of an epigrammatic
point, if he does not happen to have one of his own he knows where to
borrow just what is wanted. Speaking of embellished oratorical
diction, he quotes Talleyrand on some polished oration that was
discussed in his presence: "It is not enough to have fine sentences:
you must have something to put into them." Commenting on the
hyper-spirituality of M. Laprade, he says: "M. Laprade starts from the
_absolute notion of being_. For him the following is the principle of
Art,--'to manifest what we feel of the Absolute Being, of the
Infinite, of God, to make him known and felt by other men, such in its
generality is the end of Art.' Is this true, is it false? I know not:
at this elevation one always gets into the clouds. Like the most of
those who pride themselves on metaphysics, he contents himself
with words (_il se paye de mots_)." Here is a grand thought, that
flashes out of the upper air of poetry: "Humanity, that eternal child
that has never done growing."

M. Sainte-Beuve's irony, keen and delicate, is a sprightly medium of
truth: witness this passage on a new volume of M. Michelet:
"Narrative, properly so called, which never was his forte, is almost
entirely sacrificed. Seek here no historical highway, well laid,
solid, and continuous; the method adopted is absolute points of view;
you run with him on summits, peaks, on needles of granite, which he
selects at his pleasure to gets views from. The reader leaps from
steeple to steeple. M. Michelet seems to have proposed to himself an
impossible wager, which, however, he has won,--to write history with a
series of flashes." Could there be a more subtle, covert way of saying
of a man that he is hardened by self-esteem than the following on M.
Guizot: "The consciousness that he has of himself, and a natural
principle of pride, place him easily above the little susceptibilities
of self-love." M. Sainte-Beuve is not an admirer of Louis Philippe,
and among other sly hits gives him the following: "Louis
Philippe was too much like a _bourgeois_ himself to be long respected
by the _bourgeoisie_. Just as in former times the King of France was
only the first gentleman of the kingdom, he was nothing but the first
_bourgeois_ of the country." What witty satire on Lamartine he
introduces, with a recognition of popularity that, with one who takes
so much joy in applause as Lamartine does, is enough to take the
poison out of the