Men and Women of the Eighteenth Century [pp. 63-77]

1852.] ~Ien and Women of tJte Eig1~teentk Century. 65
palities, the corporations, the constituencies, and the legislatures of the English race-that springing from the people give majesty and permanency to public thought, and
wherever they exist, make up a truly national history of
more dignity than the record of individuals. M. lloussaye
has clearly seen the personal and biographical character
of the century-for with equal acuteness and truth, he
calls it "the age of Voltaire and of Madame de Porn padour,"-at once embodying a subtle, protbund artistic
scepticism, and a voluptuous and sentimental immorality
-the age of an intellectu'~l Mephistopheles, and a wanton
Astarte. Though the biographer of the century knows
too much to worship at these shrines, he has enough sympathy to weave garlands for the statues of the sage of
Ferney, and the Venus of the "Parc aux Cerfs.
In the introduction to the work, the writer briefly calls
our attention to the list of his gallery of portraits, through
~lich he is about to conduct us, and tells us the story of
their lives, their gay adventures, their triumphs, their sorrows, and their deaths. With equal brevity and force our
ciecrone introduces us to the scene of his artistic and successful labours.
"It is the contrast which strikes us most in the eighteenth century:
the gay rays which lighted a court of thorough voluptuarie~, regarding neither law nor gospel, soon lighted a people armed with antique vii'tues, combating an entire world more by their audacity
than their arms. Strange age -each year surprises you by its
grandeur and its meanness, by its strength and its cowardice, by
its pl~ilosophy and its fanaticism. Yonder is a rustic masquerade
of Versailles, or a masked ball of the Palais-Royal. lIere, Louis
the Fourteenth and Fifteenth on their sad death-beds, M arat at the
tribune, Marie Antoinette at the guillotine, Dufresny spending miilions to cause roses to bloom, at the side of Fontenelle, who hoards
his wit and his money; Piron, whom Rembrandt would have loved
to paii~t, looking through the windows of a pothouse at Marivaux in
a carriage going to have his portrait taken by La Tour. The Abb6
Pr6vost passes with his dear Man on-the truest passion of the age
-before Gentil-Bernard, who flutters from one passion to another.
Voltaire laughs at everything, while Jean Jacques weeps over every.
thing. Diderot builds his temple with herculean arms; Boufllers,
with his "Queen of Golconda," mocks the architect. Boucher divests pai~ting of feeling, and (;re'try finds it again in music. The
King Louis XV. making pretty verses, in juxtaposition with the
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