world, the nobility, and the bourgeoisie. There were
portraits of every grade of excellence and every variety of people,
until they culminated, some years later in "Les Caracteres" of La
Bruyere, who dropped personalities and gave them the form of permanent
types. It is a literature peculiarly adapted to the flexibility and fine
perception of the French mind, and one in which it has been preeminent,
from the analytic but diffuse Mlle. de Scudery, and the clear, terse,
spirited Cardinal de Retz, to the fine, penetrating, and exquisitely
finished Sainte-Beuve, the prince of modern critics and literary
artists. It was this skill in vivid delineation that gave such point
and piquancy to the memoirs of the period, which are little more than
a series of brilliant and vigorous sketches of people outlined upon a
shifting background of events. In this rapid characterization the French
have no rivals. It is the charm of their fiction as well as of their
memoirs. Balzac, Victor Hugo, and Daudet, are the natural successors of
La Bruyere and Saint-Simon.

The marriage of Louis XIV shattered one of the most brilliant illusions
of the Grande Mademoiselle, and it was about this time that she wrote
a characteristic letter to Mme. de Motteville, picturing an Arcadia in
some beautiful forest, where people are free to do as they like. The
most ardent apostle of socialism could hardly dream of an existence more
democratic or more Utopian. These favored men and women lead a simple,
pastoral life. They take care of the house and the garden, milk the
cows, make cheese and cakes, and tend sheep on pleasant days. But this
rustic community must have its civilized amusements. They visit, drive,
ride on horseback, paint, design, play on the lute or clavecin, and have
all the new books sent to them. After reading the lives of heroes and
philosophers, the princess is convinced that no one is perfectly happy,
and that Christianity is desirable, as it gives hope for the future.
Her platonic and Christian republic is composed of "amiable and perfect
people," but it is quite free from the entanglements of love and the
"vulgar institution of marriage." Mme. de Motteville replies very
gracefully, accepting many of these ideas, but as it is difficult to
repress love altogether, she thinks "one will be obliged to permit that
error which an old custom has rendered legitimate, and which is called
marriage." This curious correspondence takes its color from the S