Taste, for him, is the literary conscience of the soul....

M. Joubert was, in his day, the most delicate and the most original type of that class of honest people which the old society alone produced,—­spectators, listeners who had neither ambition nor envy, who were curious, at leisure, attentive, and disinterested, who took an interest in everything, the true amateurs of beautiful things.  “To converse and to know—­it was in this, above all things, that consisted, according to Plato, the happiness of private life.”  This class of connoisseurs and of amateurs, so fitted to enlighten and to restrain talent, has almost disappeared in France since every one there has followed a profession.  “We should always,” said M. Joubert, “have a corner of the head open and free, that we may have a place for the opinions of our friends, where we may lodge them provisionally.  It is really insupportable to converse with men who have, in their brains, only compartments which are wholly occupied, and into which nothing external can enter.  Let us have hospitable hearts and minds.”

* * * * *

Life is a duty; we must make a pleasure of it, so far as we can, as of all other duties.  If the care of cherishing it is the only one with which it pleases Heaven to charge us, we must acquit ourselves gaily and with the best possible grace, and poke that sacred fire, while warming ourselves by it all we can, till the word comes to us:  That will do.

MME D’HOUDETOT
[Sidenote:  Sainte-Beuve]

In the years to which we refer—­that is, the years immediately preceding 1800—­there were gathered in the salon of this charming old lady the remnants both of fashionable and philosophical society—­never, indeed, entirely exiled thence.  It may be said of Mme d’Houdetot that her ideal existence was always bounded by that Montmorency valley where the ardent devotion of Jean Jacques has engraved her memory, as it were, in immortal characters.  There, again and again, her idyllic spring-time renewed its bloom, and the freshness of her impressions continued unimpaired until her dying day.  She even remained in the country during the Reign of Terror, her retreat being respected, and her relatives flocking about her; and “I can readily believe,” writes Mme de Remusat, in a charming portrait of her venerable friend, “that she retains, of those frightful days, merely the memory of the increased tenderness and consideration which they procured for her.”

MME DE REMUSAT
[Sidenote:  Sainte-Beuve]

O mothers, gather your children about you early.  Dare to say, when they come into the world, that your youth is passing into theirs.  O mothers, be mothers, and you will be wise and happy!

DIDEROT
[Sidenote:  Sainte-Beuve]

If the Encyclopedia was in Diderot’s time considered his principal social work, his principal glory in the eyes of the men of to-day consists in his having been the first to create the emotional and eloquent style of criticism.  It is through this that he has become immortal, through this that he will be for ever dear to us journalists of every sort and condition.  Let us bow down to him as our father, and as the founder of this style of criticism.