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Rh predicament as Macihiavelli with regard to political morality. J. J. Rousseau, who was certainly not free from selfishness, has abused La Rochefoucauld's maxims, and yet, in his "Emile," he observes that "selfishness is the mainspring of all our actions;" and that "authors, while they are ever talking of truth, which they care little about, think chiefly of their own interest, of which they do not talk." La Fontaine, in his fable, (b. i. 11,) "L' Homme et son Image," has made an ingenious defence[defense] [sic] of La Rochefoucauld's book. The "Maxims" receive a portion of their peculiar point from the very courtly scene of contemplation, and from the delicacy and finesse with which the veil is penetrated that is spread over the surface of refined society. It is well known that Swift was a decided admirer of Rochefoucauld, and his celebrated poem on his own death commences with an avowal of the fact. The misanthropy of that great man renders his suffrage any thing but popular; but possibly, as in the doctrine of the invariable predominance of the stronger motive, that of self-love simply bespeaks a more strict attention to early cultivation and discipline, to render it not only compatible with virtue, but strictly and philosophically connected with the highest, the noblest, and, in common