Our Indian races having reared no monuments, like the Greeks, Romans, and Egyptians, when they have disappeared from the earth, their history will appear a fable, and they misty phantoms.
A woman to sympathize with all emotions, but to have none of her own.
A portrait of a person in New England to be recognized as of the same person represented by a portrait, in Old England. Having distinguished himself there, he had suddenly vanished, and had never been heard of till he was thus discovered to be identical with a distinguished man in New England.
SAINTE-BEUVE.
The lives of French men of letters, at least during the last two centuries, have never been isolated or obscure. Had Rousseau been born on the borders of Loch Lomond, he might have proved in his own person, and without interruption, the superiority of the savage state; and after his death the information in regard to him would have been fragmentary and uncertain. But born on the shores of Lake Leman, centralization laid its grasp upon him, drew him into the vortex of the "great world," and caused his name to figure in all the questions, the quarrels, and the scandals of his day.
The truth is, that literature is a far more important element of society in France than elsewhere. We seldom think of a French author, without recalling the history and the manners of his time. In reading a French play, though it be a tragedy of Racine or a comedy of Molière, we are reminded of the spectators before whom it was brought out. In reading a French book, though it be Pascal's "Thoughts" or the "Characters" of La Bruyère, our minds are continually diverted from the matter of the work to the circumstances under which it was written and the public for whom it was intended.
Generally, indeed, the author, however full of his subject, has evidently been thinking of his readers. His tone is that of a speaker with his audience before him. Madame de Staël actually composed in conversation, and her works are little more than imperfect records of her eloquent discourse. Innumerable productions have been read aloud, or handed round in private coteries, before being revised and published. The very excellence of the workmanship, if nothing else, shows that the article is "custom made." Even if the matter be poor, the writing is almost sure to be good. French literature abounds, beyond every other, in readable books,—books such as are welcomed by the mass of cultivated persons. It excels, in short, as a literature of the salon, rather than of the study.