uttered long before by Louis XIII., "Venez, monsieur, allons-nous ennuyer ensemble." Day and night are not more different than this sickly hothouse pressure and the pure emotion that fired Scott's northern blood, as he looked on the dark rain-swept hills till his eyes grew bright with tears. "We sometimes weep to avoid the disgrace of not weeping," says Rochefoucauld, who valued at its worth the facile sentimentality of his countrymen. Could he have lived to witness M. de Latour's hysterical transports on finding Rousseau's signature and a crushed periwinkle in an old copy of the Imitatio, the great moralist might see that his bitter truths have in them a pitiless continuity of adjustment, and fit themselves afresh to every age. What excitation of feeling accompanied the bloody work of the French Revolutionists! What purity of purpose! What nobility of language! What grandeur of device! What bottled moonshine everywhere! The wicked old world was to be born anew, reason was to triumph over passion; and self-interest, which had ruled men for six thousand years, was to be suddenly eradicated from their hearts. When
