te heroine in literature, Sir Walter Scott's
Catherine Seton! Later, I read with astonishment that Montaigne was an
unbeliever, a skeptic, almost a cynic. I was extremely indignant; he
seemed to me to be a very pious gentleman, with that wit and humour
which I seldom found in professedly pious books; and to this day I
cannot hear Montaigne talked of as a precursor of Voltaire without
believing that there is something crooked in the mind of the talker. So
much for the impressions made in youth, so much for the long, long
thoughts of which Longfellow sings.

Who is more amusingly cheerful than Montaigne, who more amusingly wise,
who so well bred and attractive, who knew the world better and took it
only as the world? Give me the old volume of Montaigne and a loaf of
bread--no Victrola singing to me in the wilderness!--a thermos bottle,
and one or two other things, and I can still spend the day in any wild
place! I did not, of course, know, in those early days, what in his
flavour attracted me. Afterward, I found that it was the very flavour
and essence of Old France. Carlyle's impressions of historical persons
interested me, but Montaigne was the most actual of living persons who
spoke to me in a voice I recognized as wholly his. To be sure, I read
him in Florio's translation.

I think it was about this time, too, that I discovered a very modern
writer, who charmed me very greatly. It was Justin McCarthy who
contributed a series of sketches of great men of the day to a magazine
called the _Galaxy_. He "did" Victor Emmanuel and Pope Pius IX. and
Bismarck, and many other of the worthies of the times. Nothing that he
wrote before or after this pleased me at all; but these sketches were so
interesting and apparently so true that they really became part of my
life. If I had been asked at this time who was my favourite of all
modern authors, and what the name of the composer I admired most, I
should have said Justin McCarthy and Offenbach! I regarded "Voici le
Sabre" in "La Grande Duchesse" as a masterpiece only to be compared to
an "Ave Verum," by Pergolesi, which was often sung in St. Philip's
Church at the Offertory! A strange mixture, but the truth is the truth.
Although I have not been able to find Justin McCarthy's series of
sketches, they still hold a sweet place in my memory. Perhaps, like
other masterpieces that one loves in youth, one would now find them like
those beautiful creatures of the sea that seem to be vermi