"_le mensonge n'est un vice que quand il fait du mal; c'est une grande
vertu quand il fait du bien_." "_L'exageration_" says De Maistre, "_est
le mensonge des honnetes gens_."

In every aspect the histrionic prevails,--by facility of association and
colloquial aptitude in the common intercourse of life,--by the inventive
element in dress, furniture, and material arrangements, plastic to the
caprice of taste and ingenuity,--by the habitudes of out-of-door life,
giving greater variety and adaptation to manners,--and by a national
temperament, susceptible and demonstrative. The current vocabulary
suggests a perpetual recourse to the casual, a shifting of the
life-scene, a recognition of the temporary and accidental. Such
oft-recurring words as _flaneur_, _liaison_, _badinage_, etc., have no
exact synonymes in other tongues. All that is done, thought, and felt
takes a dramatic expression. Lamartine elaborates a "History of
the Restoration" from two reports,--the one monarchical, the other
republican,--and, by making the facts picturesque and sentimental, wins
countless readers. Comte elaborates a masterly analysis of the sciences,
proclaims a fascinating theory of eras or stages in human development;
but the positive philosophy, of which all this is but the introduction,
to be applied to the individual and society, eludes, at last, direct and
complete application. A popular _savant_ dies, and students drag the
hearse and scatter flowers over the grave; a philosopher lectures, and
immediately his disciples form a school, and advocate his system with
the ardor of partisans; a disappointed soldier commits suicide by
throwing himself from Napoleon's column, while a _grisette_ and her
lover make their exit through a last embrace and the fumes of charcoal;
a wit seeks revenge with a clever repartee instead of his fists or cane.
A lady is the centre of attraction at a reception, and, upon inquiry, we
are gravely informed that the charm lies in the fact, that, though now