A richer art and a broader outlook upon life meet us in the pages of LA BRUYÈRE. The instrument is still the same--the witty and searching epigram--but it is no longer being played upon a single string. La Bruyère's style is extremely supple; he throws his apothegms into an infinite variety of moulds, employing a wide and coloured vocabulary, and a complete mastery of the art of rhetorical effect. Among these short reflections he has scattered a great number of somewhat lengthier portraits or character-studies, some altogether imaginary, others founded wholly or in part on well-known persons of the day. It is here that the great qualities of his style show themselves most clearly. Psychologically, these studies are perhaps less valuable than has sometimes been supposed: they are caricatures rather than portraits--records of the idiosyncrasies of humanity rather than of humanity itself. What cannot be doubted for a moment is the supreme art with which they have been composed. The virtuosity of the language--so solid and yet so brilliant, so varied and yet so pure--reminds one of the hard subtlety of a Greek gem. The rhythm is absolutely perfect, and, with its suspensions, its elaborations, its gradual crescendos, its unerring conclusions, seems to carry the sheer beauty of expressiveness to the farthest conceivable point. Take, as one instance out of a multitude, this description of the crank who devotes his existence to the production of tulips-- Vous le voyez planté et qui a pris racine au milieu de ses tulipes et devant la _Solitaire_: il ouvre de grands yeux, il frotte ses mains, il se baisse, il la voit de plus près, il ne l'a jamais vue si belle, il a le coeur épanoui de joie: il la quitte pour l'_Orientale_; de là, il va à la _Veuve_; il passe au _Drap d'or_, de celle-ci à _l'Agathe_, d'où il revient enfin à la _Solitaire_, où il se fixe, où il se lasse, où il s'assied, où il oublie de dîner: aussi est-elle nuancée, bordée, huilée a pièces emportées; elle a un beau vase ou un beau calice; il la contemple, il l'admire; Dieu et la nature sont en tout cela ce qu'il n'admire point! il ne va pas plus loin que l'oignon de sa tulipe, qu'il ne livrerait pas pour mille écus, et qu'il donnera pour rien quand les tulipes seront néligées et que les oeillets auront prévalu. Cet homme raisonnable qui a une âme, qui a un culte et une religion, revient chez soi fatigué affamé, mais fort content de sa journée: il a vu des tulipes.