es; he will soon find
that to think like them will in time become to act like them. But he who
in solitude adopts no transient feelings, and reflects no artificial
lights, who is only himself, possesses an immense advantage: he has not
attached importance to what is merely local and fugitive, but listens to
interior truths, and fixes on the immutable nature of things. He is the
man of every age. Malebranche has observed, that "It is not indeed thought
to be charitable to disturb common opinions, because it is not truth which
unites society as it exists so much as opinion and custom:" a principle
which the world would not, I think, disagree with; but which tends to
render folly wisdom itself, and to make error immortal.

Ridicule is the light scourge of society, and the terror of genius.
Ridicule surrounds him with her chimeras, which, like the shadowy monsters
opposing aeneas, are impalpable to his strokes: but remember when the sibyl
bade the hero proceed without noticing them, he found these airy nothings
as harmless as they were unreal. The habits of the literary character
will, however, be tried by the men and women of the world by their own
standard: they have no other; the salt of ridicule gives a poignancy to
their deficient comprehension, and their perfect ignorance, of the persons
or things which are the subjects of their ingenious animadversions. The
habits of the literary character seem inevitably repulsive to persons of
the world. VOLTAIRE, and his companion, the scientific Madame DE CHATELET,
she who introduced Newton to the French nation, lived entirely devoted to
literary pursuits, and their habits were strictly literary. It happened
once that this learned pair dropped unexpectedly into a fashionable circle
in the _chateau_ of a French nobleman. A Madame de Stael, the _persifleur_
in office of Madame Du Deffand, has copiously narrated the whole affair.
They arrived at midnight like two famished spectres, and there was some
trouble to put them to supper and bed. They are called apparitions,
because they were never visible by day, only at ten at night; for the one
is busied in describing great deeds, and the other in commenting on
Newton. Like other apparitions, they are uneasy companions: they will
neither play nor walk; they will not dissipate their mornings with the
charming circle about them, nor allow the charming circle to break into
their studies. Voltaire and Madame de Chatelet would have suffered the