though retiring, studious, meditative, and
self-contained, has complied with the essential condition of looking
at life and men themselves, and with his own eyes. His aphoristic
sayings are the least important part of him, but here are one or two
examples:--

"Eminent posts make great men greater, and little
men less."

"There is in some men a certain mediocrity of mind
that helps to make them wise."

"The flatterer has not a sufficiently good opinion
either of himself or of others."

"People from the provinces and fools are always
ready to take offence, and to suppose that you are
laughing at them: we should never risk a pleasantry,
except with well-bred people, and people with brains.

"All confidence is dangerous, unless it is complete,
there are few circumstances in which it is not best
either to hide all or to tell all."

"When the people is in a state of agitation, we do
not see how quiet is to return; and when it is tranquil,
we do not see how the quiet is to be disturbed."

"Men count for almost nothing the virtues of the
heart, and idolise gifts of body or intellect. The man
who quite coolly, and with no idea that he is offending
modesty, says that he is kind-hearted, constant, faithful,
sincere, fair, grateful, would not dare to say that
he is quick and clever, that he has fine teeth and a
delicate skin."

I will say nothing of Rivarol, a caustic wit of the revolutionary
time, nor of Joubert, a writer of sayings of this century, of whom
Mr. Matthew Arnold has said all that needs saying. He is delicate,
refined, acute, but his thoughts were fostered in the hothouse of a
coterie, and have none of the salt and sapid flavour that comes to
more masculine spirits from active contact with the world.

I should prefer to close this survey in the sunnier moral climate of
Vauvenargues. His own life was a pathetic failure in all the aims of
outer circumstance. The chances of fortune and of health persistently
baulked him, but from each stroke he rose up again, with undimmed
serenity and undaunted spirit. As blow fell upon blow, the sufferer
hold, firmly to his incessant lesson,--Be brave, persevere in the
fight, struggle on, do not let go, think magnanimously of man and
life, for man is good and life is affluent and fruitful. He died a
hundred and forty years ago, leaving a little body of maxims behind
him which, for tenderness, equanimity, cheerfulness, grace,