f course, there _are_ exceptions, and with one of the chief of
them, Xavier de Maistre, we may have, before long, to deal.

[379] His longest, most avowed, and most famous, the _Paradoxe sur le
Comedien_, has been worthily Englished by Mr. Walter H. Pollock.

[380] Its heroine, Suzanne Simonin, was, as far as the attempt to
relieve herself of her vows went, a real person; and a benevolent
nobleman, the Marquis de Croixmare, actually interested himself in this
attempt--which failed. But Diderot and his evil angel Grimm got up sham
letters between themselves and her patron, which are usually printed
with the book.

[381] _Mon pere, je suis damnee_ ... the opening words, and the only
ones given, of the confession of the half-mad abbess.

[382] Evangelical Protestantism has more than once adopted the principle
that the Devil should not be allowed to have all the best tunes: and I
remember in my youth an English religious novel of ultra-anti-Roman
purpose, which, though, of course, dropping the "scabrousness," had, as
I long afterwards recognised when I came to read _La Religieuse_, almost
certainly borrowed a good deal from our most unsaintly Denis of Langres.

[383] She seems to have been, in many ways, far too good for her
society, and altogether a lady.--The opinions of the late M. Brunetiere
and mine on French literature were often very different--though he was
good enough not to disapprove of some of my work on it. But with the
terms of his expression of mere opinion one had seldom to quarrel. I
must, however, take exception to his attribution of _grossierete_ to _La
Religieuse_. Diderot, as has been fully admitted, _was_ too often
_grossier_: sometimes when it was almost irrelevant to the subject. But
here, "scabrous" as the subject might be, the treatment is scrupulously
_not_ coarse. Nor do I think, after intimate and long familiarity with
the whole of his work, that he was ever a _faux bonhomme_.

[384] They have hardly had a fair opportunity of comparison with
Voltaire's _Dictionnaire Philosophique_; but they can stand it.

[385] Unless Dulaurens' not quite stupid, but formless and
discreditable, _Compere Mathieu_ be excepted.

[386] In consequence of which Mr. Ruskin's favourite publisher, the late
Mr. George Allen, asked the present writer, some twenty years ago, to
revise and "introduce" the old translation of his _Contes Moraux_. The
volume had, at least, the advantage of very charming illustrations by