mediate, because therein we find
God and our misery.

The prevalent seeming severity and intellectual coldness of Pascal's
"Thoughts" yield to a touch from the heart, and become pathetic, in such
utterances as the following, supposed to be addressed by the Saviour to
the penitent seeking to be saved:--

Console thyself; thou wouldst not seek me if thou hadst not found
me.

I thought on thee in my agony; such drops of blood I shed for thee.

It is austerity again, but not unjust austerity, that speaks as
follows:--

Religion is a thing so great that those who would not take the
pains to seek it if it is obscure, should be deprived of it. What
do they complain of, then, if it is such that they could find it by
seeking it?

But we must take our leave of Pascal. His was a suffering as well as an
aspiring spirit. He suffered because he aspired. But, at least, he did
not suffer long. He aspired himself quickly away. Toward the last he
wrought at a problem in his first favorite study, that of mathematics,
and left behind him, as a memorial of his later life, a remarkable
result of investigation on the curve called the cycloid. During his
final illness he pierced himself through with many sorrows,--unnecessary
sorrows, sorrows, too, that bore a double edge, hurting not only him,
but also his kindred,--in practising, from mistaken religious motives, a
hard repression upon his natural instinct to love, and to welcome love.
He thought that God should be all, the creature nothing. The thought was
half true, but it was half false. God should, indeed, be all. But, in
God, the creature also should be something.

In French history,--we may say, in the history of the world,--if there
are few brighter, there also are few purer, fames than the fame of
Pascal.

IX.

MADAME DE SEVIGNE.

1626-1696.

Of Madame de Sevigne, if it were permitted here to make a pun and a
paradox, one might justly and descriptively say that she was not a woman
of letters, but only a woman of--letters. For Madame de Sevigne's
addiction to literature was not at all that of an author by profession.
She simply wrote admirable private letters, in great profusion, and
became famous thereby.

Madame de Sevigne's fame is partly her merit, but it is also partly her
good fortune. She was rightly placed to be what she was. This will
appear from a sketch of her life, and still more from specimens to be
exhibite