details his last hours, narrates that he remained three days in full possession of his faculties, but unable to speak, so that, in order to make known his desires, he was obliged to resort to writing; and as he felt his end drawing near, he begged his wife to summon certain of the gentlemen who lived in the neighbourhood to bid them a last farewell.  When they had arrived, he caused mass to be celebrated in apartment; and just as the priest was elevating the host, Montaigne fell forward with his arms extended in front of him, on the bed, and so expired.  He was in his sixtieth year.  It was the 13th September 1592.

Montaigne was buried near his own house; but a few years after his decease, his remains were removed to the church of a Commandery of St. Antoine at Bordeaux, where they still continue.  His monument was restored in 1803 by a descendant.  It was seen about 1858 by an English traveller (Mr. St. John).’—­["Montaigne the Essayist,” by Bayle St. John, 1858, 2 vols. 8vo, is one of most delightful books of the kind.]—­ and was then in good preservation.

In 1595 Mademoiselle de Gournay published a new edition of Montaigne’s Essays, and the first with the latest emendations of the author, from a copy presented to her by his widow, and which has not been recovered, although it is known to have been in existence some years after the date of the impression, made on its authority.

Coldly as Montaigne’s literary productions appear to have been received by the generation immediately succeeding his own age, his genius grew into just appreciation in the seventeenth century, when such great spirits arose as La Bruyere, Moliere, La Fontaine, Madame de Sevigne.  “O,” exclaimed the Chatelaine des Rochers, “what capital company he is, the dear man! he is my old friend; and just for the reason that he is so, he always seems new.  My God! how full is that book of sense!” Balzac said that he had carried human reason as far and as high as it could go, both in politics and in morals.  On the other hand, Malebranche and the writers of Port Royal were against him; some reprehended the licentiousness of his writings; others their impiety, materialism, epicureanism.  Even Pascal, who had carefully read the Essays, and gained no small profit by them, did not spare his reproaches.  But Montaigne has outlived detraction.  As time has gone on, his admirers and borrowers have increased in number, and his Jansenism, which recommended him to the eighteenth century, may not be his least recommendation in the nineteenth.  Here we have certainly, on the whole, a first-class man, and one proof of his masterly genius seems to be, that his merits and his beauties are sufficient to induce us to leave out of consideration blemishes and faults which would have been fatal to an inferior writer.

THE LETTERS OF MONTAIGNE.

I.