has
been forced to prove his Plato a very good CHRISTIAN before he ventures
upon his translation, and has so far complied with the taste of the age,
that his whole book is overrun with texts of Scripture, and the notion of
pre-existence, supposed to be stolen from two verses of the prophets."
The sincere believer is usually the first to detect and be disgusted with
the sham one; and Addison was always a sincere believer, but he had also
that happy nature in which disgust is carried quickly and easily off
through the safety-valve of a smile.

From Paris he went to Blois, the capital of Loir-and-Cher, a small town
about 110 miles south-west of Paris. Here he had two advantages. He found
the French language spoken in its perfection; and as he had not a single
countryman with whom to exchange a word, he was driven on his own
resources. He remained there a year, and spent his time well, studying
hard, rising early, having the best French masters, mingling in society,
although subject, as in previous and after parts of his life, to fits of
absence. His life was as pure as it was simple, his most intimate friend
at Blois, the Abbe Philippeaux, saying: "He had no amour whilst here that
I know of, and I think I should have known it if he had had any." During
this time he sent home letters to his friends in England--to Montague,
Colonel Froude, Congreve, and others[1]--which contain sentences of
exquisite humour. Thus, describing the famous gallery at Versailles, with
the paintings of Louis' victories, he says: "The history of the present
King till the sixteenth year of his reign is painted on the roof by Le
Brun, so that his Majesty has actions enough by him to furnish another
gallery much longer than the first. He is represented with all the terror
and majesty that you can imagine in every part of the picture, and see
his young face as perfectly drawn in the roof as his present one in the
side. The painter has represented His Most Christian Majesty under the
figure of Jupiter throwing thunderbolts all about the ceiling, and
striking terror into the Danube and Rhine, that _lie astonished and
blasted with lightning a little above the cornice_."

This is Addison all over; and quite as good is his picture of the general
character of the French: "'Tis not in the power of want or slavery to
make them miserable. There is nothing to be met with in the country
but mirth and poverty. Every one sings, laughs, and starves. Their
conversa