and industrious mind, of refined mamers and Christian severity never appeared in a more beautiful light. At Port Royal the great Christian erudition saw its last era of prosperity and in France great men know the knack of prospering better than elsewhere. Far from being superficial, a great Frenchman preserves his surface, a natural skin to his real worth and depth—whereas the depth of a great German is usually kept inclosed in an irregularly shaped box, an elixir as it were which tries to protect itself by means of its hard and enormous casing, against the light and the intrusion of frivolous hands. And now let us find out why a people prolific in perfect Christian types was bound to produce also the perfect counter types, those of un-Christian free-thought. The French free-thinker individually had always to fight against great men, and not, as the free-thinkers of other nations, against mere dogmas and sublime abortions.
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Wit and morals.—The German who knows the secret how to be tedious in spite of intellect, knowledge and heart, and who has accustomed himself to consider tediousness as something moral—is in dread lest French wit might put out the eyes of morality, a sensation akin to the dread and delight of the little bird in presence of the rattlesnake. Of all the famous Germans, none perhaps possessed more wit than Hegel—but also he had that remarkable German dread of it, which pro-
