htest knowledge of French literature know why he
cannot be excluded here. Personally, he seems to have been an
ineffectual sort of creature, and in a large part of his rather
voluminous work he is (when he ceases to produce a sort of languid
amusement) a distinctly boring one.[399] He appears to have been
unlucky, but to have helped his own bad luck with the only signs of
effectualness that he ever showed. It is annoying, no doubt, to get
remonstrances from headquarters as to your not sending any work (plans,
reports, etc.) as an engineer, and to find, or think you find, that
your immediate C.O. has suppressed them. But when you charge him with
his disgraceful proceeding, and he, as any French officer in his
position at his time was likely to do, puts his hand on his sword, it is
undiplomatic to rush on another officer who happens to be present, grab
at and draw his weapon (you are apparently not entitled to one), and
attack your chief. Nor when, after some more unsuccessful experiences at
home and abroad, you are on half or no pay, and want employment, would
it seem to be exactly the wisdom of Solomon to give a minister the
choice of employing you on (1) the civilisation of Corsica, (2) the
exploration of the unknown parts of the Western Continent, (3) the
discovery of the sources of the Nile, and (4) a pedestrian tour
throughout India. But, except in the first instance (for the "Citizen of
Geneva" did not meddle much with cold steel), it was all very like a
pupil, and (in the Citizen's later years) a friend, of Rousseau,
carrying out his master's ideas with a stronger dose of Christianity,
but with quite as little common sense. I have not seen (or remembered)
any more exact account of Saint-Pierre's relations with Napoleon than
that given by the excellent Aime-Martin, an academic euphemiser of the
French kind. But, even reading between his lines, they must have been
very funny.[400]

_Paul et Virginie_, however, is one of those books which, having
attained and long kept a European reputation, cannot be neglected, and
it may be added that it does deserve, though for one thing only, never
to be entirely forgotten. It is chock-full of _sensibilite_, the
characters have no real character, and all healthy-minded persons have
long ago agreed that the concomitant facts, if not causes, of Virginie's
fate are more nasty than the nastiest thing in Diderot or Rabelais.[401]
But the descriptions of the scenery of Mauritius, as se