Page:Essays and criticisms by Wainewright (1880).djvu/94

6 I wish your work good speed; and for me towis success is to confer it. Your friend, 2em

P.S.—To distinguish contributions by the signature of my name, will henceforth be useless, except on particular occasions. Suffice it, that in your richest numbers, whatever is wisest, virtuousest, discreetest, best, may safely be attributed to the pen of Bonmot.

[We believe we owe to Mr. Bonmot's goodness the following pretty poem, with its excellent introduction.]

French people, it has been lately said by one of their own writers, have much less affection for liberty than for equality. The restless vanity of individuals, running through all classes, has rendered varieties of rank quite unpopular in France. Each person feels his neighbour's distinction to be an indignity to himself. Such a sentiment, directed against the degrees of society, is by no means a magnanimous one. The loftiest sense of independence induces a man to recognise implicitly the forms of social distinctions as matters of course, important in a public view, and indifferent in a personal one. Every high mind must be made aware, by its own consciousness, that no essential