So far however the beautiful and fanciful as well as fantastic Duchess is right, that the more congenial the disposition of two persons who stand upon the same intellectual level, the better they understand each other. The lower any one is sunk in animal life the less is he capable of apprehending the motives and views of those who have cultivated the better part of their nature. If I am so unfortunate as to fail in producing the moral likeness which I am endeavouring to pourtray, it will not be owing to any want of sympathy with the subject in some of the most marked features of his character. It is a maxim of Bayle's _qu'il n'y a point de grand esprit dans le caractère du quel il n'entre un peu de folie._ And he named Diogenes as one proof of this. Think indeed somewhat more than a little upon the words folly and philosophy, and if you can see any way into a mist, or a stone wall, you will perceive that the same radicals are found in both. This sort of mixt character was never more whimsically described than by Andrew Erskine in one of his letters to Boswell, in which he tells him, “since I saw you I received a letter from Mr. D——; it is filled with encomiums upon you; he says there is a great deal of humility in your vanity, a great deal of tallness in your shortness, and a great deal of whiteness in your black complexion. He says there's a great deal of poetry in your prose, and a great deal of prose in your poetry. He says that as to your late publication, there is a great deal of Ode in your Dedication, and a great deal of Dedication in your Ode. He says there is a great deal of coat in your waistcoat, and a great deal of waistcoat in your coat, that there is a great deal of liveliness in your stupidity, and a great deal of stupidity in your liveliness. But to write you all he says would require rather more fire in my grate than there is at present, and my fingers would undoubtedly be numbed, for there is a great deal of snow in this frost, and a great deal of frost in this snow.” The Marquis de Custine in a book which in all its parts, wise or foolish, strikingly characterises its author, describes himself thus: _J'ai un mélange de gravitê et de légèreté qui m' empêchera de devenir autre chose qu'un vieil enfant bien triste. Si je suis destiné à éprouver de grands malheurs, j'aurai l'occasion de remercier Dieu de m' avoir fait naitre avec cette disposition à la fois sérieuse et frivole: le sérieux m' aidera à me passer du monde—l'enfantillage à supporter le douleur. C'est à quoi il réussit meux que la raison._