many it is; and there are a multitude of his remarks which display a thorough appreciation of excellence. The maxims themselves are admirably expressed; the language is pure and elegant; the thoughts clearly conceived, and forcibly worded. Besides the maxims, Rochefoucauld wrote memoirs of various periods of the regency of Anne of Austria and the wars of the Fronde. Bayle bestows great encomium on this work: "I am sure," he says, "there are few partisans of antiquity who will not set a higher value on the duke de la Rochefoucauld's memoirs than on Cæsar's commentaries."[30] To which remark the only reply must be, that Bayle was better able to dissect motives, appreciate actions, and reason on truth and falsehood, than to discover the merit of a literary work. "Rochefoucauld's memoirs are still read:" such is Voltaire's notice, while he bestows great praise on the maxims. The chief fault of the memoirs is the subject of them,--the wars of the Fronde,--a period of history distinguished by no men of exalted excellence; neither adorned by admirable actions nor conducing to any amelioration in the state of society: it was a war of knaves (not fools) for their own advancement, ending in their deserved defeat. [Footnote 20: Mémoires de Gourville.] [Footnote 21: Mémoires de la Regence d'Anne d'Autriche, par le duc de la Rochefoucauld.] [Footnote 22: It is well known that the history of the troubles of the Fronde is recounted by a variety of eye-witnesses, no two of which agree in their account of motives--scarcely of facts. Cardinal de Retz, in his memoirs, gives a somewhat different account of the adhesion of madame de Longueville to his party. It is singular to remark how each person in his relation makes himself the prime mover. Rochefoucauld makes us to almost understand that he drew over the princess to the Fronde. The cardinal tells us that, seeing madame de Longueville one day by chance, he conceived a hope, soon realised, of bringing her over to his party. He tells us that at that time M. de la Rochefoucauld was attached to her. He was living at Poitou; but came to Paris about three weeks afterwards; and thus Rochefoucauld and De Retz were brought together. The former had been accused of deserting his party, which rendered De Retz at first disinclined to join with him; but these accusations were unfounded, and necessity brought them much together. The cardinal allows that madame de Longueville had no natural love for politics,--she was too indolent;--anger, arising from her elder brother's treatment, first led her to wish to oppose his party; gallantry led her onward; and this causing party spirit to be but the second of her motives, instead of being a heroine, she became an adventuress.] [Footnote 23: Rochefoucauld's Mémoires; Mémoires de Gourville; James's Life and Times of Louis XIV.] [Footnote 24: Mémoires du duc de Rochefoucauld.]