’I never read any life of Moliere.  Are the facts very interesting?  You see clearly in his writing what he was:  a man not high, not poetic; but firm, wide, genuine, whose clearsightedness only made him more noble.  I love him well that he could see without showing these myriad mean faults of the social man, and yet make no nearer approach to misanthropy than his Alceste.  These witty Frenchmen.  Rabelais, Montaigne, Moliere, are great as were their marshals and preux chevaliers; when the Frenchman tries to be poetical, he becomes theatrical, but he can be romantic, and also dignified, maugre shrugs and snuff-boxes.’

* * * * *

’Thursday Evening.—­Although I have been much engaged these two days.  I have read Spiridion twice.  I could have wished to go through it the second time more at leisure, but as I am going away, I thought I would send it back, lest it should be wanted before my return.

’The development of the religious sentiment being the same as in Helene, I at first missed the lyric effusion of that work, which seems to me more and more beautiful, as I think of it more.  This, however, was a mere prejudice, of course, as the thought here is poured into a quite different mould, and I was not troubled by it on a second reading.

’Again, when I came to look at the work by itself, I thought the attempt too bold.  A piece of character-painting does not seem to be the place for a statement of these wide and high subjects.  For here the philosophy is not merely implied in the poetry and religion, but assumes to show a face of its own.  And, as none should meddle with these matters who are not in earnest, so, such will prefer to find the thought of a teacher or fellow-disciple expressed as directly and as bare of ornament as possible.

’I was interested in De Wette’s Theodor, and that learned and (on dit) profound man seemed to me so to fail, that I did not finish the book, nor try whether I could believe the novice should ever arrive at manly stature.

’I am not so clear as to the scope and bearing of this book, as of that.  I suppose if I were to read Lamennais, or L’Erminier, I should know what they all want or intend.  And if you meet with Les paroles d’un Croyant, I will beg you to get it for me, for I am more curious than ever.  I had supposed the view taken by these persons in France, to be the same with that of Novalis and the German Catholics, in which I have been deeply interested.  But from this book, it would seem to approach the faith of some of my friends here, which has been styled Psychotheism.  And the gap in the theoretical fabric is the same as with them.  I read with unutterable interest the despair of Alexis in his Eclectic course, his return to the teachings of external nature, his new birth, and consequent appreciation of poetry and music.  But the question of Free Will,—­how