touching observations of his hero, “_Dieu punit en moi la présomption des lettrés_.” I read the moral of De Rémusat’s life differently. The penalty attached to the presumption of men-of-letters he undoubtedly escaped. It was the politician whom Heaven punished, for presuming to think that a man can arrange and map out his career irrespectively of the gifts with which it has endowed him, or that it is permissible, in deference to the prejudices of the vulgar, to protect one’s brow against the imperishable bays of the poet, lest they should be denied the tinsel and quickly-fading wreaths of the popular politician. He lived, we will trust, to estimate the relative value of things more wisely, though he might have learnt, while studying the fate of Abélard, that notoriety, which is the nearest approach to fame to be secured by a politician, is “fantastic, fickle, fierce, and vain.” But if he learned the lesson, he learned it in long years of exclusion from worthless power. He returned to his books when universal suffrage, allied with despotism, brought forth that atrocious bastard, Imperial Democracy; and he found in pursuits, his native passion for which he had once been half ashamed to own, something more than compensation for the loss of personal rivalries and sterile debates. At the same time, let us beware of doing De Rémusat an injustice. That he was one of those men who caress their reputation, and, in doing so, too often mar it, is certain; for we have his own avowal of the infirmity, corroborated by the statements of his son. But, in accounting for the suppression of his drama upon Abélard, we must allow something to genuine and, let me hasten to add, excessive modesty. It is not the voice of the literary coquette, but of the diffident literary workman, that we overhear in these charming sentences, to be found in the preface to his prose labors upon Abélard: Changeant de but et de travail, je m’occupai alors de mieux connaître l’Abélard de la réalité, d’apprendre sa vie, de pénétrer ses écrits, d’approfondir ses doctrines; et voilà comme s’est fait le livre que je soumets en ce moment au jugement du public. Destiné à servir d’accompagnement et presque de compensation à une tentative hasardeuse, il paraît seul aujour d’hui. Des illusions téméraires sont à demi dissipées; une sage voix que je voudrais écouter toujours, me conseille de renoncer aux fictions passionnées et de dire tristement adieu à la muse qui les inspire. . . . . . . Abi Quo blandi juvenum te revocant preces.