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Will fine wit, will exquisite humour prosper the more through this turning of all things indiscriminately into food for a gluttonous laughter, an idle craving without sense of flavours? On the contrary. That delightful power which La Bruyère points to "le ridicule qui est quelque part, il faut l'y voir, l'en tirer avec grâce et d'une manière qui plaise et qui instruise" depends on a discrimination only compatible with the varied sensibilities which give sympathetic insight, and with the justice of perception which is another name for grave knowledge. Such a result is no more to be expected from faculties on the strain to find some small hook by which they may attach the lowest incongruity to the most momentous subject, than it is to be expected of a sharper, watching for gulls in a great political assemblage, that he will notice the blundering logic of partisan speakers, or season his observation with the salt of historical parallels. But after all our psychological teaching, and in the midst of our zeal for education, we are still, most of us, at the stage of believing that mental powers and habits have somehow, not perhaps in the general statement, but in any particular case, a kind of spiritual glaze against conditions which we are continually applying to them. We soak our children in habits of contempt and exultant gibing, and yet are confident that as Clarissa one day said to me "We can always teach them to be reverent in the right place, you know." And doubtless if she were to take her boys to see a burlesque Socrates, with swollen legs, dying in the utterance of cockney puns, and were to hang up a sketch of this comic scene among their bedroom prints, she would think this preparation not at all to the prejudice of their emotions on hearing their tutor read that narrative of the Apology which has been consecrated by the reverent gratitude of ages. This is the impoverishment that threatens our posterity: a new Famine, a meagre fiend with lewd grin and clumsy hoof, is breathing a moral mildew over the harvest of our human sentiments. These are the most delicate elements of our too easily perishable civilisation. And here again I like to quote a French testimony. Sainte Beuve, referring to a time of insurrectionary disturbance, says: "Rien de plus prompt
"Essuyez vos beaux yeux, Madame de Longueville, Coligny se porte mieux. S'il a demandé la vie, Ne l'en blâmez nullement; Car c'est pour être votre amant Qu'il veut vivre éternellement." THAT Madame de Longueville witnessed the duel on the Place Royale seems to rest on no reliable authority.
But she had not quitted the room before Madame de Fontanges had changed her mind. "Attendez, Manchette. Ce n'est pas ca. Je voudrois de limonade. Charlotte, va l'en chercher." "Oui, madame," said Charlotte, leaving the room to execute the order. "Ah! mon Dieu! qu'il fait une chaleur epouvantable." "Mimi, que tu es paresseuse? Eventez! vite, vite." "Ou est Monsieur?" "Monsieur dort."
Then there came to Venice Germans and Bavarians, French and Lombards, Tuscans and Hungarians, and every people that lives by merchandise and they took it to their countries. Is it not true to say that Venice was the proudest city on earth, la noble cite que l'en apele Venise, qui est orendroit la plus bele dou siecle?
"Il ne faut pas mettre un ridicule où il n'y en a point: c'est se gâter le goût, c'est corrompre son jugement et celui des autres. Mais le ridicule qui est quelque part, il faut l'y voir, l'en tirer avec grâce et d'une manière qui plaise et qui instruise."
Pour ses petits enfans, elle leur mit des brasselets de Pourcelaine et de rassade aux bras, et baigna leurs os de ses larmes; on ne l'en pouuoit quasi separer, mais on pressoit, et il fallut incontinent partir." During these harangues, other functionaries were lining the grave throughout with rich robes of beaver-skin.
"Monsieur," said Gustave Adolphe to his commander, "le prisonnier a soif, et demande encore de l'eau." "Va l'en chercher donc," replied the old negro, with a wave of his speaking-trumpet. In the space of two hours, the schooner was brought to an anchor, with as much noise and importance as she had been got under weigh.
The man that is wise at nineteen, "Je l'en fais mon compliment," but I assuredly do not envy him; and now, even now, when I number more years than I should like to "confess," rather than suffer the suspicious watchfulness of age to creep on me, I prefer to "go on believing," even though every hour of the day should show me, duped and deceived.
The man that is wise at nineteen, "Je l'en fais mon compliment," but I assuredly do not envy him; and now, even now, when I number more years than I should like to "confess," rather than suffer the suspicious watchfulness of age to creep on me, I prefer to "go on believing," even though every hour of the day should show me, duped and deceived.
Et en maudissant le caractère de Mathilde, il l'en aimait cent fois plus; il lui semblait avoir dans ses bras une reine.
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