ositively
ill dressed, yet he paid no attention to any external art, except
cleanliness. His usual garb was a brown coat, much too large for him,
a coloured neckcloth, a spotted waistcoat, grey trowsers, and short
gaiters: add to these gloves of most unsullied doeskin, and a curiously
thick cane, and the portrait is complete.

In manners, he was civil, or rude, familiar, or distant, just as the
whim seized him; never was there any address less common, and less
artificial. What a rare gift, by the by, is that of manners! how
difficult to define--how much more difficult to impart! Better for a
man to possess them, than wealth, beauty, or talent; they will more than
supply all. No attention is too minute, no labour too exaggerated, which
tends to perfect them. He who enjoys their advantages in the highest
degree, viz., he who can please, penetrate, persuade, as the object
may require, possesses the subtlest secret of the diplomatist and the
statesman, and wants nothing but opportunity to become "great."

CHAPTER XV.

Le plaisir de la societe entre les amis se cultive par une ressemblance
de gout sur ce qui regarde les moeurs, et par quelque difference
d'opinions sur les sciences; par la ou l'on s'affermit dans ses
sentiments, ou l'on s'exerce et l'on s'instruit par la dispute.--La
Bruyere.

There was a party at Monsieur de V--e's, to which Vincent and myself
were the only Englishmen invited: accordingly as the Hotel de V. was in
the same street as my hotel, we dined together at my rooms, and walked
from thence to the minister's house.

The party was as stiff and formal as such assemblies invariably are,
and we were both delighted when we espied Monsieur d'A--, a man of much
conversational talent, and some celebrity as an ultra writer, forming a
little group in one corner of the room.

We took advantage of our acquaintance with the urbane Frenchman to join
his party; the conversation turned almost entirely on literary subjects.
Allusion being made to Schlegel's History of Literature, and the
severity with which he speaks of Helvetius, and the philosophers of his
school, we began to discuss what harm the free-thinkers in philosophy
had effected.

"For my part," said Vincent, "I am not able to divine why we are
supposed, in works where there is much truth, and little falsehood, much
good, and a little evil, to see only the evil and the falsehood, to
the utter exclusion of the truth and the good. All men whose m