y unfair
representative of a nation. But even in the wars you allude to, if you
examine, you will generally find them originate in the love of justice,
which is the basis of good sense, not from any insane desire of conquest
or glory. A man, however sensible, must have a heart in his bosom, and
a great nation cannot be a piece of selfish clockwork. Suppose you and
I are sensible, prudent men, and we see in a crowd one violent fellow
unjustly knocking another on the head, we should be brutes, not men, if
we did not interfere with the savage; but if we thrust ourselves into a
crowd with a large bludgeon, and belabour our neighbours, with the hope
that the spectators would cry, 'See what a bold, strong fellow that
is!'--then we should be only playing the madman from the motive of the
coxcomb. I fear you will find in the military history of the French and
English the application of my parable."

"Yet still, I confess, there is a gallantry, and a noblemanlike and
Norman spirit in the whole French nation, which make me forgive many
of their excesses, and think they are destined for great purposes, when
experience shall have sobered their hot blood. Some nations, as some
men, are slow in arriving at maturity; others seem men in their
cradle. The English, thanks to their sturdy Saxon origin, elevated, not
depressed, by the Norman infusion, never were children. The difference
is striking, when you regard the representatives of both in their great
men--whether writers or active citizens."

"Yes," said De Montaigne, "in Milton and Cromwell there is nothing of
the brilliant child. I cannot say as much for Voltaire or Napoleon.
Even Richelieu, the manliest of our statesmen, had so much of the French
infant in him as to fancy himself a _beau garcon_, a gallant, a wit, and
a poet. As for the Racine school of writers, they were not out of the
leading-strings of imitation--cold copyists of a pseudo-classic, in
which they saw the form, and never caught the spirit. What so little
Roman, Greek, Hebrew, as their Roman, Greek, and Hebrew dramas?
Your rude Shakespeare's _Julius Caesar_--even his _Troilus and
Cressida_--have the ancient spirit, precisely as they are imitations of
nothing ancient. But our Frenchmen copied the giant images of old just
as the school-girl copies a drawing, by holding it up to the window, and
tracing the lines on silver paper."

"But your new writers--De Stael--Chateaubriand?"*

* At the time of this conversati