s. These examples gave him his great
chance, and he built them up, those exemplary "portraits" of his, with
infinite labour, accumulating details to make a type, and sometimes,
it is possible, accumulating too many. The result is that the
"Caracteres" are sometimes a little laboured; I do not know any other
fault that can be laid to their charge.

One of the most important qualities of La Bruyere was that he prepared
the popular mind for liberty. He is democratic in many ways, in his
language, where he often borrows words from the _patois_ of the common
people; in his exposure of the errors of the _ancien regime_, its
tyranny, its selfishness, its want of humanity and imagination; in his
hatred of wealth, the scandalous triumph of which had already reached
a pitch which the next generation was to see outdone. In all this, as
cannot be too often insisted upon, it was essential for a reformer to
be prudent. The People had no voice, and that their interests should
be defended was inconceivable.[14] In the next century, after the reign
of Louis XV. was over and speech had, in a great measure, become free,
it was not understood how difficult it was under Louis XIV. to express
any criticism of the feudal order. For instance, there is a long
passage at the end of the chapter "De la Ville," which scandalized the
political reformers of the eighteenth century. It is that which
begins, "The emperors never triumphed in Rome so softly, so
conveniently, or even so successfully, against wind and rain, dust and
sunshine, as the citizen of Paris knows how to do as he crosses the
city to-day in every direction. How far have we advanced beyond the
mule of our ancestors!" La Bruyere was charged, and even by Voltaire,
with attacking the progress of civilization, and with preferring the
rude subterfuges of Carlovingian times to the comforts of 1688. But he
was really making an appeal for thrift and modesty of expenditure on
the part of those bourgeois who had suddenly become rich, as a
satirist of our own day might denounce the pomp of a too successful
shopkeeper, without being accused of denying the convenience of
motor-cars or desiring to stop the progress of scientific invention.

[Footnote 14: Perhaps the earliest Frenchman to have his full
attention called to the miseries of the poor, was Vauban,
whose benevolence was an object of amazement to his own
contemporaries. Saint-Simon notes that "Patriote comme il
l