the novelty and propriety of the story, he added a versification more perfect than is to be found in any other of his plays. Yet it was unlucky. It had been represented to madame de Maintenon, that it was ill fitted for the education of noble young ladies to cause them to act before a whole court; and that the art of recitation was dearly purchased by the vanity, love of display, and loss of feminine timidity thus engendered. "Athalie" was, therefore, never got up like "Esther." It was performed, before the king and a few others, in madame de Maintenon's private apartment, by the young ladies, in their own dresses. Afterwards it was performed at Paris with ill success. The author was deeply mortified, while Boileau consoled him by prophesying "le public reviendra;" a prophecy which, in the sequel, was entirely fulfilled. Many letters of Racine to his family are preserved; which show us the course of his latter years. It was uniform: though a large family brought with it such cares as sometimes caused him to regret his having given up his resolution to turn monk. At home he read books of piety, instructed his children, and conversed with his friends. Boileau continued the most intimate. Often the whole family repaired to Auteuil, where they were received with kindness and hospitality: at other times he followed the king to Fontainebleau and Marli. He had the place of gentleman in ordinary to the king (of which he obtained the survivance for his son), and was respected and loved by many of the chief nobility. Racine, however, was not destined to a long life; and, while eagerly employed on the advancing his family, illness and death checked his plans. His son thinks that he pays him a compliment by attributing his death to his sensibility, and the mortification he sustained from the displeasure of the king. We, on the contrary, should be glad to exonerate his memory from the charge of a weakness which, carried so far, puts him in a contemptible light; and would rather hope that the despondency, the almost despair, he testified, was augmented by his state of health, as his illness was one that peculiarly affects the spirits. Like every person of quick and tender feelings, he was, at times, inclined to melancholy, and given to brood over his anxieties and griefs. He rather feared evil than anticipated good; and these defects, instead of lessening by the advance of age and the increase of his piety, were augmented through the failure of his health, and the timid and cowardly tendency of his faith.