"The Tartuffian Age" is the title of a late Italian book admirably translated into English by an American, Mr. W. A. Nettleton. That such should be the Italian author's chosen title for his work incidentally shows how cosmopolitan is our French dramatist's fame. The book is a kindly-caustic satire on the times in which we live, found by the satirist to be abundant in the quality of Tartuffe, that leaven of the Pharisees which is hypocrisy. Moliere is said to have had a personal aim in drawing the character of Tartuffe. This, at least, was like Dante. There is not much sweet laughter in such a comedy. But there is a power that is dreadful. Each succeeding generation of Frenchmen supplies its bright and ingenious wits who produce comedy. But as there is no second Shakespeare, so there is but one Moliere. VIII. PASCAL. 1623-1662. Pascal's fame is distinctly the fame of a man of genius. He achieved notable things. But it is what he might have done, still more than what he did, that fixes his estimation in the world of mind. Blaise Pascal is one of the chief intellectual glories of France. Pascal, the boy, had a strong natural bent toward mathematics. The story is that his father, in order to turn his son's whole force on the study of languages, put out of the lad's reach all books treating his favorite subject. Thus shut up to his own resources the masterful little fellow, about his eighth year, drawing charcoal diagrams on the floor, made perceptible progress in working out geometry for himself. At sixteen he produced a treatise on conic sections that excited the wonder and incredulity of Descartes. Later he experimented in barometry, and pursued investigations in mechanics. Later still he made what seemed to be approaches toward Newton's binomial theorem. Vivid religious convictions meantime deeply affected Pascal's mind. His health, never robust, began to give way. His physicians prescribed mental diversion, and forced him into society. That medicine, taken at first with reluctance, proved dangerously delightful to Pascal's vivacious and susceptible spirit. His pious sister Jacqueline warned her brother that he was going too far. But he was still more effectively warned by an accident, in which he almost miraculously escaped from death. Withdrawing from the world, he adopted a course of ascetic practices, in which he continued till he died--in his thirty-ninth year. He wore about his waist an iron girdle armed with sharp points; and this he would press smartly with his elbow when he detected himself at fault in his spirit. Notwithstanding what Pascal did or attempted worthy of fame, in science, it was his fortune to become chiefly renowned by literary achievement. His, in fact, would now be a half-forgotten name if he had not written the "Provincial Letters" and the "Thoughts."