llection, the feminine
solicitude, that mingle freely and without eagerness or expectancy in
his gaze, as though he were hearkening to some ever-flowing inward
stream of divine melody. We think of that gracious touch in Bacon's
picture of the father of Solomon's House, that 'he had an aspect as
though he pitied men.' If we reproach France in the eighteenth century
with its coarseness, artificiality, shallowness, because it produced
such men as the rather brutish Duclos, we ought to remember that this
was also the century of Vauvenargues, one of the most tender, lofty,
cheerful, and delicately sober of all moralists.

[Footnote 1: _Pensees_, i. v. 8.]

[Footnote 2: _Ib._ i. vi. 16.]

[Footnote 3: _Ib._ i. vii. 6.]

[Footnote 4: M. Gilbert's edition of the _Works and Correspondence of
Vauvenargues_ (2 vols. Paris: Furne, 1857), ii. 133.]

[Footnote 5: _Eloge de P.H. de Seytres_. _OEuv._ i. 141-150.]

[Footnote 6: _OEuv._ ii. 233. See too p. 267.]

[Footnote 7: No. 579, i. 455.]

[Footnote 8: _Reflexions sur Divers Sujets_, i. 104.]

[Footnote 9: _OEuv._ ii. 249.]

[Footnote 10: _Ib._ ii. 265.]

[Footnote 11: _Ib._ ii. 266.]

[Footnote 12: _Conseils a un Jeune Homme_, i. 124.]

[Footnote 13: _OEuv._ ii. 252.]

[Footnote 14: _Ib._ ii. 272.]

[Footnote 15: _Memoires de Marmontel_, vol. i. 189.]

[Footnote 16: The reader of Marmontel's _Memoires_ will remember the
extraordinary and grotesque circumstances under which a younger brother
of Mirabeau, (of _l'ami des hommes_, that is) appealed to the memory of
Vauvenargues. See vol. i. 256-260.]

[Footnote 17: _OEuv._ i. 225-232.]

[Footnote 18: _Letter to Saint-Vincens_, ii. 146.]

[Footnote 19: No. 318.]

[Footnote 20: Napoleon said on some occasion, '_Il faut vouloir vivre et
savoir mourir_.' M. Littre prefaces the third volume of that heroic
monument of learning and industry, his _Dictionary of the French
Language_, by the words: 'He who wishes to employ his life seriously
ought always to act as if he had long to live, and to govern himself as
if he would have soon to die.']

[Footnote 21: No. 223.]

[Footnote 22: No. 300.]

[Footnote 23: No. 264.]

[Footnote 24: _Reflexions Critiques sur quelques Poetes_, i. 237.]

[Footnote 25: _OEuv_. i. 248.]

[Footnote 26: _Reflexions Critiques sur quelques Poetes_, i. 238.]

[Footnote 27: _OEuv._ i. 243.]

[Footnote 28: _OEuv._ i. 275.]

[Footnote 29: _Correspondance_. _OEuv._ ii. 131, 207.]

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