370 The Character and Anecdotes of Nicolas Chamfort. [Oct. 



careful observation had enabled him to discover, he retired from the 

 tumult and distraction of the world, and, like a painter of the old time, 

 living among the creations of his genius, devoted the remaining years 

 of his life to their delineation. To write the aphorisms of meditation, 

 is one thing ; to communicate the truths of painful experience, is ano- 

 ther. The German physiognomist studied the passions in the counte- 

 nance; La Bruyere, in the conversation and the actions. He was the 

 Lavater of the understanding. 



There are two classes of moralists, as well as of politicians : one makes 

 man a pilgrim and an alien upon a dreary and desolate land, plodding 

 along in sickness, and suffering, and despair — an outcast, under the eye 

 of a relentless inquisition ; the other puts a crown of flowers upon his 

 head, and sends him into the crowd as into a triumphant festival. The 

 greater number of moralists have, for the most part, inclined to the 

 former opinion. ]VIontaigne, La Bruyere, La Rochefoucault, Swift, 

 Mandeville, Helvetius, and many whom I could add to the list, have 

 found life a thing requiring tears rather than rejoicing. It does not, 

 that I can discover, at all detract from the excellence of a moral axiom, 

 that the many which have been addressed to the great and powerful 

 have failed in producing an adequate result. The ingenious writer from 

 whose Maximes et Pensies I propose making one or two extracts, 

 deceived himself in uttering such an idea. The Christian religion has 

 now been dwelling among us during a period of more than eighteen 

 hundred years ; and yet of how small comparative efficacy have her 

 ministrations been productive ! Lord Brougham would be loth to 

 exchange the woolsack for the calm and saintly solitude of the hermit's 

 cell ; and Wilberforce would shew no particular eagerness, I ex- 

 pect, to sell half of his possessions, and give the money to the poor. 

 These things are so, and yet who would think of reproaching religion 

 that she had done so little .'' I am wandering, however, from the sub- 

 ject. 



A moralist must live in the world ; he must play his part in its comedy 

 and its tragedy, and follow sometimes in the train, and at others as a 

 spectator, of its pomps and vanities ; he must analyse the component 

 parts of which its loves and enmities are compounded. His experience 

 will then, it may be, enable him to discover which sides of the soul it 

 will he necessary to parali/ze, if he would live happily in the world. The 

 idea, which the reader I doubt not will appreciate as it deserves, is taken 

 from one of the Maxivies of I\L Chamfort. A man must have seen much, 

 and suffered still more, before he could have made such a reflection. 

 Johnson, with all his knowledge of mankind, and all the light which 

 a surprising intellect enabled him to pour forth, is still rather a theo- 

 retical moralist. Nature, as beheld in books, resembles a drama per- 

 formed behind a green curtain. Victorin Fabre has a very pertinent 

 observation, in his Eloge de la Bruyere, upon the modes in which three 

 celebrated v.'riters have written upon women, which may be no unplea- 

 sant illustration of our remarks. Thomas, for instance, an elegant and 

 accomplished writer, but knowing nothing of the female character 

 except from history, composes an eulogy in the style of Plutarch when 

 celebrating a Grecian or Roman hero ; Rousseau, whose acquaintance 

 with the spirit of tlie sex cannot be questioned, pourtrayed it with the 

 accuracy of a philosopher, though he injured the truth of his picture 

 not a little by the soft and Italian tone of its colouring ; but La Bruyere 



