I once knew a man who was agitated by praise to such a degree that whenever it was bestowed upon him he exaggerated what he had just said and took such pains to add to his success that he always ended in losing it. I never dared to applaud him from the fear of leading him to affectation and of his making himself ridiculous by the heartiness of his self-love. Another was so afraid of the appearance of wishing to display himself that he let fall words negligently and contemptuously; his assumed indolence only betrayed one more affectation, that of pretending to have none. When vanity displays herself, she is good-natured; when she hides herself, the fear of being discovered renders her sour, and she affects indifference, satiety, in short, whatever may persuade other men that she has no need of them. These different combinations are amusing for the observers, and one is always astonished that self-love does not take the course, which is so simple, of naturally avowing its desire to please, and making the utmost possible use of grace and truth to attain the object. There is something in the foregoing strain of ascription from Madame de Stael to the social virtues of the French which recalls that remarkable character given by Pericles, in his noble funeral oration reported by Thucydides, to the national spirit and habit of the Athenians in contrast with those of their Spartan neighbors and enemies. If of Madame de Stael the woman we shall in any respect have failed to give a just idea, it will be by not having adequately represented the generosity of her character. Her desire and her ability to shine should not be permitted, in any one's conception of her, to obscure her fondness and her fitness for loving and for being loved. Those who knew her intimately bear touching testimony to this quality of womanliness in the personal character of Madame de Stael. She was fundamentally an amiable, as she was conspicuously a strenuous, spirit, and no mutations in fashion or in taste will ever reduce her to less than a great tradition in literature. XX. CHATEAUBRIAND. 1768-1848. Chateaubriand--his is a faded fame. He was a false brilliant from the first, but he glittered during his time like a veritable Mountain of Light. Men hardly found out till he died that instead of being precious stone he was nothing but paste. Our figure misrepresents the fact. Chateaubriand was _not_ thus spurious through and through. He had streaks of genuine in him. His true symbol perhaps would be a common rubble-stone flawed splendidly with diamond.