return to the
set tasks of the school-room.

[Illustration: THE READING OF "PAUL AND VIRGINIA."]

"These cliffs," said Master Lewis, "were the favorite haunts of the
author of 'Paul and Virginia.' He was a mere theorist, a daydreamer;
and here he loved to gaze on the bright sea, and plan expeditions
of republican colonists to such lands as he paints in his novels. His
expeditions ended in the air. But he himself went to Mauritius, where
he lived three years. On his return to Paris, while the brightness of
tropical scenery still haunted him, he wrote 'Paul and Virginia.'"

[Illustration: RACINE.]

"When Corneille, the great Corneille, as the popular dramatist came to
be called, read his masterpiece, _Polyeucte_, to a party of
fashionable literary people in Paris, it was coolly received on
account of the fine Christian sentiments it contained. The criticism
was that the religion of the stage should be that, not of God, but of
the gods. Even a bishop present took this view.

"Bernardin de St. Pierre was as sharply criticised when he first read
in public his beautiful romance of 'Paul and Virginia.' It was at a
party given by Madame Necker. 'At first,' says a writer, 'every one
listened in silence; then the company began to whisper, then to yawn.
Monsieur de Buffon ordered his carriage, and slipped out of the
nearest door. The ladies who listened were ridiculed when tears at
last gathered in their eyes.'

[Illustration: RACINE READING TO LOUIS XIV.]

"_Polyeucte_ still lives in French literature, and the wits who
condemned it are forgotten; 'Paul and Virginia' charmed France; fifty
imitations of it were published in a single year, and it was rapidly
translated into all European tongues. It remains a classic, but the
critics in Madame Necker's parlors are recollected only for their
mistake."

"We must read the works of these French authors on our return," said
Wyllys, "or at least the best selections from them. I shall wish to
read 'Pascal's Provincial Letters' and the Letters of Madame de
Sevigne, after what you have said of them."

"You should also read some of the best selections from the works of
Boileau, Moliere, and Racine. I have only time to allude to them
briefly here.

"These authors were friends. They all lived in the time of the Grand
Monarch, as Louis XIV. was called. La Fontaine, some of whose fables
you have read, belongs to the same period, which is the greatest in
French literature.

"Louis