Two other interesting chapters are those on the “Grace, Gaiety, and Taste of the French Nation,” and on “Literature in the Reign of Louis XIV.” The peculiar social influences which, among successive generations of courtiers, produced the best writers of France, are very happily described; but here again the conclusions are indicated rather than developed. Madame de Staël stated her conviction that the palmy days of French wit were over, and that the literature of the future, if it wished to flourish, must invest itself with greater gravity. Convinced that the moment had come for the dramatist to pack up his puppet-show and despatch it to a museum of antiquities, she laid down rules for an ideal republican literature, and prescribed strong emotions, careful analysis of character, and a high moral tone as indispensable ingredients. She was in fact one of the first to admire and write that appalling product, the novel with a purpose. Anything duller than _Delphine_ it would be difficult to imagine. From the first page to the last there is hardly one line of genuine inspiration. All is forced, exaggerated, overstrained. The misfortunes of the heroine are so needlessly multiplied, that they end by exasperating the reader; and the _motif_ of the book—the contrast between conventional and moral ideals—fails in true dramatic interest. The plot is as follows: Madame de Vernon has a daughter, Mathilde, beautiful and sanctimonious, whom she desires to marry to Léonce de Mondoville, a young Spaniard of noble birth and aristocratic prejudices. Madame de Vernon has in the whole world one friend, Delphine d’Albémar, a miracle of grace, wit, and beauty, who does acts of unheard-of generosity, and generally by some evil chance accomplishes them at the moment when they lead to unlucky results for herself. She is a young widow, and has been left by her elderly and devoted husband a fortune, of which she proceeds to divest herself as rapidly as possible. One of her favorite objects of charity is Madame de Vernon, who does not deserve her pity, since the pecuniary embarrassments under which she suffers arise from her love of card-playing, and general mismanagement. But Delphine adores her friend, who is represented as extremely charming, and is in some respects a well-drawn character. Her life is one long act of dissimulation. She masks her cynicism cleverly, under an appearance of indolence, which dispenses her from ever taking inconvenient resolutions, or appearing agitated by events which should—but do not—move her. She has some faint affection for her generous dupe—Delphine; but not enough to be prevented from taking every mean advantage of her. There is some difficulty in arranging Mathilde’s marriage, on account of the want of a dowry. Delphine hastens to supply this, and then the bridegroom elect, Léonce, appears on the scene. He is described as divinely handsome. The cold and pietistic Mathilde falls in love with him immediately (as was her duty,