From Golden Hours.

CANDOR VERSUS COURTESY.

IT is astonishing how very many people there are, who, seemingly unable to draw a line between deception and reticence, commonly associate insincerity with courtesy, bluntness with honesty, as though the attempt to make things pleasant must necessarily involve deceit, as if there were a certain incompatibility between truthfulness and consideration for the feelings of others. How often do we hear the remark, "Oh, is a very good fellow, but I don't quite trust him, he's too civil by half,” or, “You must not mind

victis over fallen causes, are not edifying. But what are these defects to the good which he has done? To whom has he not been a salutary teacher? Kingsley, Froude, and Ruskin have sat at his feet, and a host of others, scarcely a leading mind of our time excepted, have felt his influence. Wherever, in truth, men have turned their minds for the last quarter of a century to the deep relations of things his spirit has been present to rebuke frivolity, to awaken courage and hope. No other writer of this generation ever cast so potent a spell on the youth of England. They might outgrow him; they might travel far from the region of his thoughts; they might learn to see in the teacher of -'s rough manner, it is only his honest, their early days only the iconoclast whose outspoken way; he cannot help saying work was done. They could never wholly what he thinks." And so, on the strength get outside the circle of his spell, and to of a reputation for honesty, the plain, take up one of his books and read but a blunt man sneers at or ignores the polish page or two was sure to recall a flood of which prevents unpleasant friction, and old memories and influences even as will expects to be allowed to elbow his way the sound of distant bells or a snatch of through life, priding himself upon the a once familiar song. To many he was abrupt utterance of unpleasant truths, always a teacher. He brought ardor and disconcerting some people, irritating and vehemence congenial to their young vexing others, and, by way of asserting hearts, and into them he shot fiery arrows his own individuality, treading without which could never be withdrawn. What compunction upon his neighbor's finest Hazlitt said of Coleridge was true of him feelings, and oftentimes leaving his heavy - he cast a great stone into the pool of footprints upon hearts that are tender, contemporary thought, and the circles sad, or sorrowful. Persons of strong have grown wider and wider. He was will and strong opinions are, perhaps, the early enough in the field to deal the last most prone to this species of self-asserblows to expiring Byronism. It was his tion, being much given to measuring and fortune to be for most educated English- judging everything by their own fixed men the discoverer of the literature of ideas, and to showing an undisguised Germany. In what state did he find lit- contempt for those who differ from them; erary criticism here? What did it not but so far from a blunt, discourteous, become under his hand? How many fault-finding spirit, with a keen eye for heaps of dry bones in history have been blemishes and defects, and a dull apprequickened and made to rise and walk? hension of merit, being in any way desirHow many skeletons have been clothed able, it only proves a man wanting in one with flesh at his touch? And yet in all of the most necessary of social virtues, his varied activity, from first to last, he viz., sympathy; in every discourteous act was something of the inspired peasant. he says practically, "Your comfort and The waves of London life came up to convenience are of no importance to me, and about him; but they had never over-you are a person of no consequence whatwhelmed him or had power to alter him one jot. With all his culture and nearly fifty years of residence in the south, he was to the end substantially unchanged; his ways were his forefathers' ways; his deepest convictions were akin to theirs; and it needed but a little stretch of the imagination to suppose him a fellowworker with Knox or the friend and companion of Burns.

JAMES MACDONELL.

ever," and naturally enough under this treatment, resentment is aroused, goodwill vanishes, and affection melts away. There would be fewer broken friendships, fewer unhappy unions and family quarrels, were it not so much the custom amongst intimate friends and relations to neglect the small courtesies of life, to show less and less mutual deference as they grow more and more familiar; it is the foundation of misery in marriage, and many a serious and lifelong estrangement has begun, not from want of affection so much

as from lack of that delicate and instinc-| what is due to oneself, to remember at tive appreciation of the feelings of others, the same time the respect due to others. which makes a person shrink from saying Why we should always hang our pictures unpleasant things or finding fault unless in the best light possible, and yet be so absolutely obliged, and in any case to inclined to view our neighbors in the avoid wounding the offender's sense of most unfavorable, it is difficult to underdignity, or stirring up within him feelings stand. If a friend is blind in one eye, of opposition and animosity; for although and has a disfiguring scar on the same many persons profess to be above taking side of his face, is it not both to his adoffence at honest censure, and even seem vantage and to ours to look at him in to court criticism, yet it must be very, profile? Many good and well-intentioned very carefully administered not to be un- persons are dreadfully afraid of being palatable. Even kind and generous ac- unnecessarily polite, but St. Peter exhorts tions are often so uncouthly performed to courtesy, St. Paul was "all things to as to cause the recipient more pain than all men," and though there are of course pleasure, while a reproof or denial may occasions when plain speaking is a duty, be so sweetened by courtesy as almost to let us in the name of everything that is do away with any sense of mortification kindly and generous, give, in doing it, as or disappointment. True good breeding little pain as possible. As in every aspect is always inclined to form a favorable of life and duty, there are rocks on either judgment, and to give others the credit hand to be avoided, but the danger in of being actuated by worthy motives; it excess is not nearly so great as in neglect does not wish, or seem to know, more of courtesy. At the same time good about people than they themselves desire manners are the only oil with which to should be known, but it is always pre- keep the complex machinery of social life pared, when necessary, to take an in- in good working order, to set people at terest in the affairs of others, while self their ease, to draw them nearer together, is not suffered to obtrude unduly; in a and to make them forget what is disasuperior it never reminds an inferior, by greeable. tone or gesture, of his position; in an inferior it never apes equality. A show of respect never fails to beget respect. Suaviter in modo, fortiter in re, should be the motto of all who desire to be either useful or beloved; the stronger an individual, the more impressive is his gentleness, the wiser he is, the more gratifying and complimentary his deference; and in a world where there is so much unavoidable discomfort and unhappiness, it is surely every one's duty to cultivate those gracious manners, under whose magic influence the restless and dissatisfied grow more content with themselves and their surroundings, by which the diffident are encouraged, the invalid is roused and interested, the young are inspired with self-respect, the old are kept bright and hopeful; which, in short, beam sunshine everywhere, and increase a thousandfold the aggregate of human happiness. As regards the plea that extreme courtesy must verge upon insincerity, there is no dishonesty in being civil; it is only carrying into practice the golden rule, to give to every one the best place possible in one's esteem, and while not forgetting

Inconsiderate bluntness, on the other hand, roughness of speech and manners (which are but another name for egotism and selfishness), are sure, sooner or later, to react on those who habitually practise them, for they possess, more than any other faculty, the knack of making enemies. The influence of many good people is undoubtedly much diminished by their want of that courtesy which has been well called benevolence in small things; however, good manners, self-control, gentle speech, ready admiration, must be, in their best sense, not a mere surface polish, but an index of generous feeling, of unselfishness, and consideration for others; they are the offspring as well as the source of good-will, since the whole nature must grow softer and sweeter from the constant practice of small selfsacrifices for the good of others, and in proportion as each individual succeeds, not in smothering candor, but in clothing it with the soft robes of kindliness and courtesy, will he, while himself approaching the highest ideal of human goodness, develop in others unsuspected depths of wisdom, generosity, and love.

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From The Nineteenth Century.
LA ROCHEFOUCAULD.

Critics [he says] and especially foreigners, who in these latter days have judged our two literary centuries most severely, agree in the acknowledgment that what dominated in them, what reflected them in countless ways, what gave them their chief ornament and glory, was the spirit of conversation and society, understanding of the world and of men, quick and ludicrous, exquisite delicacy of feeling, the fine apprehension of the seemly and of the grace, the edge, the polish to be attained in speech. And virtually there indeed - with reservations which will occur to everybody, and two or three names such as Bossuet and Montesquieu which we put aside - there, up to about 1789, is the distinctive character, the feature marking out French literature from among the literatures of Europe.

EVERYBODY has at one time or another quoted La Rochefoucauld; some with half apology, as though the light shed by his "Maxims were an evil glamor from the enemy of mankind. But no classical writer of modern times is so little known and so much the creature of hearsay. His "Maxims," about which he took infinite care, have been until these latter days most shamefully treated in France; and in England we have added to the falsification of the French text by a set of translations the most villanous that have ever been perpetrated. The result is that philosophers refute and rhetoricians rail at La Rochefoucauld without knowing much about him, and certainly without knowing what were his genuine doctrines. In These are the terms in which SainteLondon one may hunt through all the Beuve begins to outline his portrait of second-hand book-shops for a day without Madame de Sévigné, who must rank with being able to procure a single English the highest in any literature pervaded by copy of the "Maxims," or any passable the spirit of biography, of society, and of edition of them in French; and that tells conversation. They are of equal value to a good deal of the oblivion into which the indicate the position of La Rochefoucauld celebrated author has fallen, at least in in the world of letters. His way was not this country, through the unfaithfulness her way, but they are both incomparable of his editors and translators. Indeed, - she in letters, he in maxims. And alfor the most part, when people quote La though her letters fill a score of large Rochefoucauld, it is not because they volumes, while his maxims occupy little have taken the trouble to read his little more than a hundred small pages, he has book as he issued it, but because they probably packed into his short sentences have culled from other books, or have as much of the life and movement of his gathered in conversation, half a dozen day as the lady has in her long, rambling, sentences which cleave to the memory. and ever delightful effusions. La RocheThe volume, as he put it forth, is not to foucauld was himself one of the greatest be found in English at all, save in trans- personages of the most splendid period of lations which are a travesty, and very French society. He was the most briloften reverse the meaning in the most liant talker and the most polished gentleludicrous manner. As for the fate of the man of his time. No one had studied work in France, it has been so singular, more curiously than he the arts of society, when we take into account the splendor the sources of conduct, the entanglements of the author's reputation, that it cannot of accident, and the meshes of conversaescape our inquiries; and in truth it is tion. His maxims are the most perfect only by unravelling it that we can fairly crystallizations of the thoughts and fashdistinguish the true La Rochefoucauld | ions and secret influences amid which he from the fictitious one of common report. stirred. One of his short sentences conThat unravelling is to come; but first of veys the outcome of an hour's voluble all, and to give it the importance which is talk, or distils to its drop of meaning all due to it, let us glance at the position of the worth of an intrigue and all the gaiety La Rochefoucauld, and fix a few points in of a season. If it be true, as Saintehis career as a writer, as a moralist, and Beuve says, that up to the Revolution, French literature is to be considered in

as a man.