scattered over Europe; and his usefulness can only be felt at those intervals, when, after a long interchange of destruction, men, recovering their senses, discover that “knowledge is power.”  BURKE, whose ample mind took in every conception of the literary character, has finely touched on the distinction between this order of contemplative men, and the other active classes of society.  In addressing Mr. MALONE, whose real character was that of a man of letters who first showed us the neglected state of our literary history, BURKE observed—­for I shall give his own words, always too beautiful to alter—­“If you are not called to exert your great talents, and employ your great acquisitions in the transitory service of your country, which is done in active life, you will continue to do it that permanent service which it receives from the labours of those who know how to make the silence of closets more beneficial to the world than all the noise and bustle of courts, senates, and camps.”

A moving picture of the literary life of a man of letters who was no author, would have been lost to us, had not PEIRESC found in GASSENDI a twin spirit.  So intimate was the biographer with the very thoughts, so closely united in the same pursuits, and so perpetual an observer of the remarkable man whom he has immortalised, that when employed on this elaborate resemblance of his friend, he was only painting himself with all the identifying strokes of self-love[A].

[Footnote A:  “I suppose,” writes EVELYN, that most agreeable enthusiast of literature, to a travelling friend, “that you carry the life of that incomparable virtuoso always about you in your motions, not only because it is portable, but for that it is written by the pen of the great Gassendus.”]

It was in the vast library of PINELLI, the founder of the most magnificent one in Europe, that PEIRESC, then a youth, felt the remote hope of emulating the man of letters before his eyes.  His life was not without preparation, nor without fortunate coincidences; but there was a grandeur of design in the execution which originated in the genius of the man himself.

The curious genius of PEIRESC was marked by its precocity, as usually are strong passions in strong minds; this intense curiosity was the germ of all those studies which seemed mature in his youth.  He early resolved on a personal intercourse with the great literary characters of Europe; and his friend has thrown over these literary travels that charm of detail by which we accompany PEIRESC into the libraries of the learned; there with the historian opening new sources of history, or with the critic correcting manuscripts, and settling points of erudition; or by the opened cabinet of the antiquary, deciphering obscure inscriptions, and explaining medals.  In the galleries of the curious in art, among their marbles, their pictures, and their prints, PEIRESC has often revealed to the artist some secret in his own art.  In the museum of the naturalist,