be ashamed of the shift.”  Happy it is, he thinks, that we do not, as a rule, meet death on a sudden, any more than we encounter the death of youth in one day.  But this is only the dark background of the enjoyment of life, to which Montaigne clings, as he says, “even too eagerly.”  Merely to live, merely to muse over this spectacle of the world, simply to feel, even if the thing felt be agony, and to reflect on the pain, and on how it may best be borne—­this is enough for Montaigne.  This is his philosophy, reconciling in a way the maxims of the schools that divided the older worlds, the theories of the Stoic and wiser Epicurean.  To make each moment yield all that it has of experience, and of reflection on that experience, is his system of existence.  Acting on this idea, all contrasts of great and petty, mean and divine, in human nature do not sadden, but delight him.  It was part of the play to see the division between the King of Navarre (Henri IV.) and the Duke of Guise.  He told Thuanus that he knew the most secret thoughts of both these princes, and that he was persuaded that neither of them was of the religion he professed.  This scandal gave him no concern, compared with his fear that his own castle would suffer in wars of the League.  As to the Reformation, he held it for a hasty, conceited movement on the part of persons who did not know what they were meddling with, and, being a perfect sceptic, he was a perfectly good Churchman.  Full of tolerance, good-humour, and content, cheerful in every circumstance, simple and charming, yet melancholy in his hour, Montaigne is a thorough representative of the French spirit in literature.  His English translator in 1776 declares that “he meets with a much more favourable entertainment in England than in his native country, a servile nation that has lost all sense of liberty.”  Like many other notions current in 1776, this theory of Montaigne’s popularity at home and abroad has lost its truth.  Perhaps it would be more true to say that Montaigne is one of the last authors whom modern taste learns to appreciate.  He is a man’s author, not a woman’s; a tired man’s, not a fresh man’s.  We all come to him, late indeed, but at last, and rest in his panelled library.

THACKERAY’S DRAWINGS.

The advertisements of publishers make a very pleasant sort of reading.  They offer, as it were, a distant prospect of the great works of the future, looming in a golden haze of expectation.  A gentleman or lady may acquire a reputation for wide research by merely making a careful study of the short paragraphs in the literary papers.