seldom been regarded with much enthusiasm, who can seriously address himself to the perusal of his great tragedians, Corneille and Racine--or of his great comedians, Moliere and Regnard--or if his great poets, Boileau and La Fontaine--or of his great wits, La Rochfaucauld and La Bruyere--or of his great philosophers, Des Cartes and Pascal--or of his great divines, Bossuet and Arnauld--or of his great scholars, Mabillon and Montfaucon--or if his great preachers, Bourdaloue and Masillon--and not confess that no other monarch was ever surrounded by an assemblage of men of genius so admirable for the extent, the variety and the perfection of their powers. "And yet the fact that such an assemblage were clustered into a group, of which so great a king was the centre, implies that there must have been some characteristic quality uniting them all to each other and to him, and distinguishing them all from the nobles of every other literary commonwealth which has existed among men. What, then, was that quality, and what its influence upon them? "Louis lived with his courtiers, not as a despot among his slaves, but as the most accomplished of gentlemen among his associates. The social equality was, however, always guarded from abuse by the most punctilious observance, on their side, of the reverence due to his pre-eminent rank. In that enchanted circle men appeared at least to obey, not from a hard necessity, but from a willing heart. The bondage in which they really lived was ennobled by that conventional code of honor which dictated and enforced it. They prostrated themselves before their fellow-man with no sense of self-abasement, and the chivalrous homage with which they gratified him, was considered as imparting dignity to themselves. "Louis acknowledged and repaid this tribute of courtesy, by a condescension still more refined, and by attentions yet more delicate than their own. The harshness of power was so ingeniously veiled, every shade of approbation was so nicely marked, and every gradation of favor so finely discriminated, that the tact of good society--that acquired sense, which reveals to us the impression we make on those with whom we associate--became the indispensable condition of existence at Versailles and Marly. The inmates of those palaces lived under a law peculiar to themselves; a law most effective for its purposes, though the recompense it awarded to those who pleased their common master was but his smile, and though the penalty it imposed on those who displeased him was but his frown." AMERICAN WAR-ENGINES.