There are heroes in evil as well as in good.

We do not despise all who have vices, but we despise all who have not any virtue.

We may say that vices await us in the journey of life, as hosts with whom we must successively lodge; and I doubt whether experience would enable us to avoid them were we allowed to travel the same road again.

When vices leave us, we flatter ourselves by thinking that it is we who leave them.

Virtue would not go so far if vanity did not keep her company.

Whoever thinks he can do without the world deceives himself much; but whoever thinks the world cannot do without him deceives himself much more.

The virtue of women is often the love of their reputation and their repose.

The true gentleman is he who does not plume himself on anything.

Perfect valor is to do without a witness all that we could do before the whole world.

Hypocrisy is a homage which vice renders to virtue.

All those who discharge debts of gratitude cannot on that account flatter themselves that they are grateful.

Too great eagerness to requite an obligation is a kind of ingratitude.

Fortunate people seldom correct themselves: they always think they are right when fortune favors their bad conduct. Pride will not owe, and self-love will not pay.

The good we have received from a man requires us to be tender of the evil he does us.

Nothing is so contagious as example; and we never do any great good or any great harm that does not produce its like. We copy good actions from emulation, and bad ones from the malignity of our nature, which shame kept a prisoner and example sets at liberty.

It is a great folly to wish to be wise all alone.

ON CONVERSATION.

THE reason why so few people are agreeable in conversation is, that every one thinks more of what he wishes to say than of what others say. We should listen to those who speak, if we

would be listened to by them; we should allow them to make themselves understood, and even to say pointless things. Instead of contradicting or interrupting them, as we often do, we ought on the contrary to enter into their mind and into their taste, show that we understand them, praise what they say so far as it deserves to be praised, and make them see that it is rather from choice that we praise them than from courtesy. We should avoid disputing about indifferent things, seldom ask questions (which are almost always useless), never let them think that we pretend to more sense than others, and easily cede the advantage of deciding a question.

We ought to talk of things naturally, easily, and more or less seriously, according to the temper and inclination of the persons we entertain; never press them to approve what we say, nor even to reply to it. When we have thus complied with the duties of politeness, we may express our opinions, without prejudice or obstinacy, in making it appear that we seek to support them with the opinions of those who are listening.

We should avoid talking much of ourselves, and often giving ourselves as example. We cannot take too much pains to understand the bent and compass of those we are talking with, in order to link ourselves to the mind of him whose mind is the most highly endowed; and to add his thoughts to our own, while making him think as much as is possible that it is from him we take them. There is cleverness in not exhausting the subjects we treat, and in always leaving to others something to think of and say.

We ought never to talk with an air of authority, nor make use of words and expressions grander than the things. We may keep our opinions, if they are reasonable; but in keeping them, we should never wound the feelings of others, or appear to be shocked at what they have said. It is dangerous to wish to be always master of the conversation, and to talk of the same thing too often; we ought to enter indifferently on all agreeable subjects which offer, and never let it be seen that we wish to draw the conversation to a subject we wish to talk of.

It is necessary to observe that every kind of conversation, however polite or however intelligent it may be, is not equally proper for all kinds of well-bred persons; we should choose what is suited to each, and choose even the time for saying it: but if there be much art in knowing how to talk to the purpose, there is not less in knowing how to be silent. There is an

eloquent silence, it serves sometimes to approve or to condemn; there is a mocking silence; there is a respectful silence. There are, in short, airs, tones, and manners in conversation which often make up what is agreeable or disagreeable, delicate or shocking: the secret for making good use of them is given to few persons those even who make rules for them mistake them sometimes; the surest, in my opinion, is to have none that we cannot change, to let our conversation be careless rather than affected, to listen, to speak seldom, and never to force ourselves to talk.

ON THE CONTEMPT OF DEATH.

AFTER having spoken of the falsity of so many apparent virtues, it is reasonable to say something of the falsity of the Contempt of Death: I mean that contempt of death which the Pagans boast of deriving from their own strength, without the hope of a better life.

There is a difference between enduring death with firmness, and despising it. The first is common enough; but the other, in my opinion, is never sincere. Everything, however, has been written which could by any possibility persuade us that death is not an evil, and the weakest men, as heroes, have given a thousand examples to support this opinion. Nevertheless, I doubt whether any man of good sense ever believed it; and the pains men take to persuade others and themselves of it lets us see that the task is by no means easy. We may have many causes of disgust with life, but we never have any reason for despising death. Even those who destroy their own lives do not think it such a little matter, and are as much alarmed at, and recoil as much from, it as others when it comes upon them in a different way from the one they have chosen. The inequality remarkable in the courage of a vast number of brave men arises from the fact of death presenting itself in a different shape to the imagination, and appearing more instant at one time than another. Thus it results that, after having despised what they know nothing of, they end by fearing what they do know.

If we would not believe that death is the greatest of all evils, we must avoid looking at it and all its circumstances in the face. The cleverest and bravest are those who take the most respectable pretexts to prevent themselves from reflecting on it, but any man who is able to view it in its reality finds it a horrible thing. The necessity of dying constituted all the firmness of the philosophers. They conceived they should go through

with a good grace what they could not avoid; and as they were unable to make themselves eternal, they had nothing left for it but to make their reputations eternal, and preserve all that could be secured from the shipwreck.

To put a good face on the matter, let us content ourselves. with not discovering to ourselves all that we think of it; and let us hope more from our constitutions than from those feeble reasonings which would make us believe that we can approach death with indifference. The credit of dying with firmness; the hope of being regretted; the desire of leaving a fair reputation; the certainty of being freed from the miseries of life, and of no longer depending upon the caprices of fortune, are remedies which we should not reject. But at the same time we should not believe that they are infallible. They do as much to assure us as a simple hedge in war does to assure those who have to approach a place to the fire of which they are exposed. At a distance it appears capable of affording a shelter; but when near, it is found to be a feeble defence. It is flattering ourselves to believe that death appears to us, when near, what we fancied it at a distance; and that our sentimentswhich are weakness itself are of a temper so strong as not to suffer from that aspect of terror. It is but a poor acquaintance with the effects of self-love to think that it can aid us in treating lightly what must necessarily destroy itself; and reason, in which we think to find so many resources, is too weak in this encounter to persuade us of what we wish.

On the contrary, it is reason which most frequently betrays us; and, instead of inspiring us with the contempt of death, serves to reveal to us all that it has dreadful and terrible. All that reason can do for us is to advise us to turn away our eyes from death, to fix them on other objects. Cato and Brutus chose illustrious ones; a lackey a short time since amused himself with dancing upon the scaffold on which he was about to be executed. Thus, though motives may differ, they often produce the same effects. So that it is true that whatever disproportion there may be between great men and common people, both the one and the other have been a thousand times seen to meet death with the same countenance; but it has been with this difference, that in the contempt which great men show for death it is the love of glory which hides it from their view; and in the common people it is an effect of their want of intelligence, which prevents their being acquainted with the greatness of their loss and leaves them at liberty to think of other things.

ÉDOUARD ROD.

ROD, ÉDOUARD, a Swiss novelist and journalist; born at Nyon in 1857. He was educated at Berne and Berlin. Removing to Paris, he became in 1884 editor-in-chief of "La Revue Contemporaine." Upon returning to his native land, he was made, in 1887, Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Geneva. Besides his thesis on "Le Développement du Mythe d'Eschyle dans la Littérature," M. Rod has published several works, among which are "À Propos de l'Assommoir" (1879); "Les Allemands à Paris" (1880); "Wagner et l'Esthétique Allemande" (1886), and "Giacomo Leopardi," a study on the nineteenth century, in 1888. It is, however, largely as a novelist that he is known. He has written a series of novels with psychological analysis for a basis. These books are "Palmyre Veulard" (1881); "La Chute de Miss Topsy" (1882); "L'Autopsie du Docteur Z." (1884); “La Femme de Henri Vanneau" (1884); "La Course à la Mort” (1885); "Tatiana Leiloff" (1886); "Névrossée" (1886); "Le Sens de la Vie" (1889). Other works are "Scènes de la Vie Cosmopolite," "Lilith," "L'Eau et le Feu," "L'Idéal de M. Gendre" (1889); "Nouvelles Romances," "Les Idées Morales du Temps Présent," "Dante," "Stendhal" (1891); "La Sacrifiée" (1892); "La Vie Privée de Michel Teissier" (1893); "La Seconde Vie de Michel Teissier" (1894); "Le Silence" (1894); "Les Roches Blanches " (1895).

MARRIAGE.

(From "The Sense of Life.")

I SHOULD like to find a word to express a being who is tranquil, sweet, good, confiding; one whose presence alone gives repose; a being of grace and charm, breathing peace. . . . While I work she is there behind me, watchful not to disturb me; from time to time I am conscious of the noise of the worsted she draws through the canvas, or the page she turns, or of her light breathing. Sometimes I turn and no longer see her; she has silently disappeared: after a moment she returns