The literary critic passing from one variety to another of the type of a certain period in a manner resembles the scientist tracking some structure through its metamorphoses in the different zoological species. The next variant of our main type who seems to me worthy of study, is Benjamin Constant's _Adolphe_, the hero of the only romance written by that famous political author. Adolphe is less brilliant than René, less melancholy than Obermann, but he is a representative of the same restless and unsatisfied generation. He too is related to Werther, but, like René, he is the child of the age of disillusionment. It was not until after the fall of the Empire that the book appeared, but it was written, or at any rate projected, in the first years of the century. Like those other books which on their emotional side are in touch with Rousseau, and which perpetuate his tradition, it conflicted sharply with the prevailing sentiments of the day. In Paris figures and the sword held sway, in literature the classic ode and science were in vogue, whereas in Constant's book emotions and psychical analysis predominated. Benjamin Constant de Rebecque was born at Lausanne in 1767, of Protestant parents. His mother died in childbirth; his father, a cold-hearted, worldly-wise man, was much such another as the father in _Adolphe_. Constant was an exceptionally gifted being. If, in reading _Adolphe_, we find it a little difficult to understand the extraordinary fascination exercised by the hero, the explanation is, that, having employed so many reminiscences of his own life in the making of the book, Constant seems to have shrunk from dwelling too strongly on his hero's attractive qualities. Adolphe is so distinctly Constant himself, that we can only, so to speak, understand how the type originated, by studying the author's youth. Constant was refined and charming, early addicted to a sort of sportive self-mockery, excitably impressionable, and, curiously enough, at the same time slightly blasé. To a craving for strong emotions was added a gift of putting himself entirely outside his own emotions. Even as a youth he was able to halve himself, to double himself, and to mock at himself. He could say: "I am as amused by the embarrassments in which I find myself as though they were another's," and his favourite expressions when angry were such as this: "I storm, I am beside myself with fury, and yet at the bottom of it all I am indifferent."