a catalogue of an auction.  He was quite as wise as Bacon; he could look through men quite as clearly, and search them quite as narrowly; certain of his moods were quite as serious, and in one corner of his heart he kept a yet profounder melancholy; but he was volatile, a humourist, and a gossip.  He could be dignified enough on great occasions, but dignity and great occasions bored him.  He could stand in the presence with propriety enough, but then he got out of the presence as rapidly as possible.  When, in the thirty-eighth year of his age, he—­somewhat world-weary, and with more scars on his heart than he cared to discover—­retired to his chateau, he placed his library “in the great tower overlooking the entrance to the court,” and over the central rafter he inscribed in large letters the device—­“I do not understand; I pause; I examine.”  When he began to write his Essays he had no great desire to shine as an author; he wrote simply to relieve teeming heart and brain.  The best method to lay the spectres of the mind is to commit them to paper.  Speaking of the Essays, he says, “This book has a domestic and private object.  It is intended for the use of my relations and friends; so that, when they have lost me, which they will soon do, they may find in it some features of my condition and humours; and by this means keep up more completely, and in a more lively manner, the knowledge they have of me.”  In his Essays he meant to portray himself, his habits, his modes of thought, his opinions, what fruit of wisdom he had gathered from experience sweet and bitter; and the task he has executed with wonderful fidelity.  He does not make himself a hero.  Cromwell would have his warts painted; and Montaigne paints his, and paints them too with a certain fondness.  He is perfectly tolerant of himself and of everybody else.  Whatever be the subject, the writing flows on easy, equable, self-satisfied, almost always with a personal anecdote floating on the surface.  Each event of his past life he considers a fact of nature; creditable or the reverse, there it is; sometimes to be speculated upon, not in the least to be regretted.  If it is worth nothing else, it may be made the subject of an essay, or, at least, be useful as an illustration.  We have not only his thoughts, we see also how and from what they arose.  When he presents you with a bouquet, you notice that the flowers have been plucked up by the roots, and to the roots a portion of the soil still adheres.  On his daily life his Essays grew like lichens upon rocks.  If a thing is useful to him, he is not squeamish as to where he picks it up.  In his eye there is nothing common or unclean; and he accepts a favour as willingly from a beggar as from a prince.  When it serves his purpose, he quotes a tavern catch, or the smart saying of a kitchen wench, with as much relish as the fine sentiment of a classical poet, or the gallant bon mot