plained of the atmosphere of
the Court, as fatal to the practice of virtue. Vauvenargues replied that
the people there were doubtless no better than they should be, and that
vice was dominant. 'So much the worse for those who have vices. But when
you are fortunate enough to possess virtue, it is, to my thinking, a
very noble ambition to lift up this same virtue in the bosom of
corruption, to make it succeed, to place it above all, to indulge and
control the passions without reproach, to overthrow the obstacles to
them, and to surrender yourself to the inclinations of an upright and
magnanimous heart, instead of combating or concealing them in retreat,
without either satisfying or vanquishing them. I know nothing so weak
and so vain as to flee before vices, or to hate them without measure;
for people only hate them by way of reprisal because they are afraid of
them, or else out of vengeance because these vices have played them some
sorry turn; but a little loftiness of soul, some knowledge of the heart,
a gentle and tranquil humour, will protect you against the risk of being
either surprised, or keenly wounded by them.'[50]

There is a tolerably obvious distinction between two principal ways of
examining character. One is a musing, subjective method of delineation,
in which the various shades and windings seem to reveal themselves with
a certain spontaneity, and we follow many recesses and depths in the
heart of another, such as only music stirs into consciousness in
ourselves. Besides this rarer poetic method, there is what may be
styled the diplomatist's method; it classifies characters objectively,
according to the kinds of outer conduct in which they manifest
themselves, and according to the best ways of approaching and dealing
with them. The second of these describes the spirit in which
Vauvenargues observed men. He is French, and not German, and belongs to
the eighteenth century, and not to the seventeenth or the nineteenth.
His _Characters_, very little known in this country, are as excellent as
any work in this kind that we are acquainted with, or probably as
excellent as such work can be. They are real and natural, yet while
abstaining as rigorously as Vauvenargues everywhere does from grotesque
and extravagant traits, they avoid equally the vice of presenting the
mere bald and sterile flats of character, which he that runs may read.
As we have said, he had the quality possessed by so few of those who
write abou