quently put forward by men, and every one must be entertained by the exquisite subtlety of manner in which he has laid bare feelings and motives always most carefully hidden, often unacknowledged, sometimes unknown to the actors themselves. Truly he may be said to have " anatomized" man and shown what breeds about his heart. The spectacle he offers us is, it may be admitted, decidedly gloomy, and by no means gratifying to human pride; but on the other hand. La Rochefoucauld is very far from denying, as has been represented, the reality of virtue. Several of the maxims show a complete recognition of its existence, and indeed a desire that it should be freed from the odium created by the pretenders that usurp its name. The precise amount of truth which is allowed to be found in the maxims will perhaps always vary with the experience or the feelings of individual readers: but it may be remarked as strange, that any general denunciations of the depravity of human nature are almost always tacitly, if not readily, acquiesced in; but when this principle comes to be applied to particular actions, it is indignantly scouted. The Scriptures have laid down that the heart of man is "deceitful and desperately wicked;" the Church, that "man is far gone from original righteousness and has no strength of himself to turn to good works;" and that " not only do all just works, but even all holy desires, and all good counsels, proceed from God." Moralists as well as theologians have been earnest in urging this point, and would appear to have been successful, at least in theory; but when an author like La Rochefoucauld attempts to elicit the same principle from a subtle and penetrating analysis of human actions, the world seems to shrink from the practical application of the theory it had approved. The reason appears to be, that a general statement of a principle, as it concerns
