the corresponding pages of Hume: one would not believe that the same history was treated, so different is the tone! What I remark especially is that it is possible for me in reading Hume, to check him, to contradict him sometimes: he furnishes me with the means of doing so by the very details he gives, by the balance he strikes. In reading Guizot this is almost impossible, so closely woven is the tissue, so interlinked is the whole narrative. He holds you fast and leads you to the end, firmly combining the fact, the reflection, and the end in view.

How far, even after these two volumes, and regarding his writings as a whole, is M. Guizot, a historical painter? How far and to what extent is he properly a narrator? These would be very interesting questions to discuss as literary ones, without favor and without prejudice; and, whatever fault one might find with M. Guizot, it would necessarily be accompanied with an acknowledgment of a peculiar originality which belongs only to him. Even when he narrates, as in his Life of Washington, it is of a certain abstract beauty that he gives us an impression-of an external beauty that is designed to please the eyes. His language is strong and ingenious; it is not naturally picturesque. He uses always the graver, never the brush. His style, in the fine passages, is like reflections from brass, and as it were, of steel, but reflections under a gray sky, and never in the sunlight. It has been said of the worthy Joinville, the ingenuous chronicler, that his style savors still of his childhood, and that "worldly things are created for him only on the day when he sees them." At the other extremity of the historic chain, with Guizot, it is quite the contrary. His thought, his very recital, assumes spontaneously a kind of abstract, half-philosophical appearance. He communicates to everything that he touches a tint, so to speak, of an anterior reflection. He is astonished at nothing; he explains whatever he presents to you, he gives the reason for it. A person who knew him well said of him: "That which he has known only since morning he appears to have known from all eternity." In fact, an idea in entering that lofty mind loses its freshness it instantly fades,

and becomes in a manner antique. It acquires premeditation, firmness, weight, temper, and sometimes a gloomy splendor.-Causeries du Lundi; translation of MATTHEWS.

MASSILLON.

Every exposition in Massiilon, every oratorical strophe, is composed of a series of thoughts and phrases, commonly very short, that reproduce themselves, springing one out of the other, calling to each other, succeeding each other, having no sharp points, no imagery that is either too bold or too commonplace, and moving along with rhythm and melody as parts of one and the same whole. It is a group in motion; it is a natural, harmonious concert. Buffon, who regarded Massillon as the first of our prose writers, seems to have had him in mind, when, in his discourse upon style, he said: "In order to write well, it is necessary, then, to be fully possessed of one's subject; it is necessary to reflect upon it enough to see clearly the order of one's thoughts, and to connect them together in a continuous chain, each link of which represents an idea; and when one takes his pen, he should conduct it along this first outline, without permitting it to stray from it, without pressing it too unequally, without giving it any other movement than that which may be determined by the space it is to run over. It is in this that severity of style consists." In Massillon this natural manner had no appearance of severity, but rather an appearance of abundance and overflow, like that of a stream running down a gentle declivity, the accumulated waters of which fall by their own weight. Massillon, more than any other orator, has resources for the fruitful development of moral themes; and the utmost grace and ease of diction spontaneously unite in his style, so that his long and full period is composed of a series of members and reduplications united by a kind of insensible tie, like a large, full wave which is composed of a series of little waves.

Massillon, the orator, if we could have heard him, would certainly have ravished, penetrated, melted us; read to-day, he does not produce the same effects; and, considered as a writer, he is not admired by all in the

same degree. It is not given to all minds to feel and to relish equally the peculiar beauties and excellences of Massillon. To like Massillon, to enjoy him sincerely and without weariness, is a quality and almost a peculiarity of certain minds, which may serve to define them. He will love Massillon who loves what is just and noble better than what is new, who prefers elegant simplicity to a slightly rough grandeur; who, in the intellectual order, is pleased before all things with rich fertility and culture, with small sobriety, with ingenious amplification, with a certain calmness and a certain repose even in motion, and who is never weary of those eternal commonplaces of morality which humanity will never exhaust. Massillon will please him who has a certain sensitive chord in his heart, and who prefers Racine to all other poets; in whose ear there is a certain vague instinct of harmony and sweetness which makes him love certain words even in a superabundance. He will please those who have none of the impatience of a taste too superb or too delicate, nor the quick fevers of an ardent admiration; who have no thirst for surprise or discovery, who love to sail upon smooth rivers, who prefer the impetuous Rhone to the Eridanus as the poet has pictured it, or even to the Rhine in its rugged majesty, the tranquil course of the French river, of the royal Seine, washing the more and more widening banks of a flourishing Normandy.-Causeries du Lundi; translation of MATTHEWS.

SAINT-HILAIRE, JULES BARTHELEMY, a French statesman, philosopher, and Oriental scholar, born in Paris, August 19, 1805; died there, November 25, 1895. From 1826 to 1830 he wrote much for newspapers, and after the revolution in 1830 he was active in politics. In 1834 he was appointed a teacher in French literature in the Polytechnic School, and began one of the monumental works of literature, a complete translation of Aristotle, which he finished in 1892 after almost sixty years of labor. In 1838 he was appointed Professor of Greek and Latin Philosophy in the College of France, and in 1839 was made a member of the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences. At the revolution of 1848 he was chosen as a moderate and an anti-socialist to the Constituent Assembly. The coup d'état in December, 1852, ending parliamentary government, brought him the alternative of taking the oath of fidelity to the empire or resigning his chair at the Collège de France. He resigned, and turned from politics to literature. Ten years later he was reinstated in his professorship. In 1869 he was elected to the Corps Législatif, where he acted with the extreme left. After the fall of the empire he was one of those who proposed that Thiers should be made. chief executive; and later, he was one of the fif teen called by the government to assist in ar

ranging peace with Prussia. He was elected lifesenator in 1875, and stood with the republican minority. In 1880 he accepted the portfolio of foreign affairs under Jules Ferry. When Gambetta came to power in 1881 Saint-Hilaire returned to literature. At the age of eighty-nine he published a controversial work of remarkable power on Victor Cousin. His original works were numerous; among them Buddha and His Religion (1860); Mahomet and the Koran (1865); Philosophy of the Two Ampères (1866).

THE GOOD OF BUDDHISM.

There is so much to be said against Buddhism that it may be as well to begin by the good that can be justly attributed to it, for, limited as our praise must be, it will at least mitigate in some degree the severity of the judgment that must follow.

The most striking feature of Buddhism, that is, as founded by the Buddha, is its practical tendency. The Buddha sets himself a great problem, which is no less than that of the salvation of mankind and even of the whole universe; and he seeks its solution by the most direct and practical method. It is true that, considering himself a philosopher, he might have indulged in speculative analysis, but the Brahmans had made such an abuse of this process that the Reformer deemed it better to abstain from it. For in seeking to penetrate into the origin of things, it is necessary to avoid sinking into needless obscurity, and speak only to a school instead of addressing the masses. Philosophy, even when it does not aim at founding a religion, should never lose sight of its first duty, which is to serve humanity; and the philosopher who is satisfied to understand and to save himself alone, by the truth he has discovered, is little worthy of his name. If these truths were to be solely for the advantage of one individual, they would lose their value; and as for the mass of hu