There is one point, however, on which it must be admitted that Addison shows himself much in advance of his French precursor, or rather perhaps we should consider it a proof of the advantage of English society under Anne over French society under Louis XIV. The delicacy and sympathy with which women are treated in the _Spectator_ has no parallel in the "Caracteres." In that volume, the chapter "Des Femmes" is perhaps the least agreeable to a sensible reader of to-day. It is crowded with types of pretentious and abnormal womanhood, which it caricatures very effectively. Addison had manifestly studied it, for here we see the origin of his coquettes and prudes, with their "brocade petticoat which rises out of the mines of Peru, and the diamond necklace out of the bowels of Indostan." But what we miss completely in La Bruyere is that cordial recognition of women as the proper companions of men and the organizers of intelligent society which is so admirably sustained in the _Spectator_. It was Addison, and not La Bruyere, who broke down once for all, and finally, the monkish conception of women as the betrayers of the human species, which had lingered on so detestably from the Middle Ages. The influence of La Bruyere on Steele is apparent, and may have preceded that on Addison. We may observe that Steele says, in the general preface to the _Tatler,_ "the elegance, purity and correctness which appeared in [Mr. Addison's] writings were not so much to my purpose as... to rally all those singularities of human life, through the different professions and _characters_ in it, which obstruct anything that is truly good and great," The similarity of expression here is certainly not accidental; La Bruyere stood before Steele as a model when he wrote, for instance, in 1709, Mr. Isaac Bickerstaffs "portraits" of Chloe and Clarissa, or the "lucubration" on Deference to Public Opinion. When La Bruyere died, Steele was already an author, and what is more, a moralist. It is impossible not to believe that he had been reading the "Caracteres" when it occurred to him that he might procure himself "a most exquisite pleasure," by framing "Characters of Domestic Life."