consciousness of superiority, and needs no external support; vanity arises from a secret sense of weakness, and thirsts for a perpetual solace from the applause of others. It is in the French writers that this inordinate weakness of literary men is most conspicuous, and in them it exists to such an extent as, on this side of the Channel, to be altogether ridiculous. Every Frenchman thinks his life worth recording. It was long ago said that the number of unpublished memoirs which exist in France, on the war of the League, would, if put together, form a large library. If those relating to the war of the Revolution were accumulated, we have no doubt they would fill the _Bibliothèque du Roi_. The number already published exceeds almost the dimensions of any private collection of books. The composition and style of these memoirs is for the most part as curious, and characteristic of French character, as their number is descriptive of their ruling passion. In the age of the religious wars, every writer of memoirs seems to have placed himself in the first rank, Henry IV. in the second; in that of the Revolution, the greater part of the autobiographies scarcely disguise the opinion, that, if the first place must be reluctantly conceded to Napoleon Buonaparte, the second must, beyond all question, be assigned to themselves. The Abbé de Pradt expressed the feeling almost every one entertained of himself in France, not the sentiment of an individual man, when he said, "There was one who overturned Napoleon, and that man was me." Most persons in this country will exclaim, that this statement is overcharged, and that it is incredible that vanity should so generally pervade the writers of a whole nation. If they will take the trouble to read Lamartine's _Confidences_ and _Raphael_, containing the events of his youth, or his _Histoire de la Révolution de 1848_, recently published, they will find ample confirmation of these remarks; nor are they less conspicuously illustrated by the more elaborate _Mémoires d'Outre Tombe_ of Chateaubriand, the name of which is prefixed to this essay.