OF FRENCH SOCIETY. had they been devoted to the purposes for which they were given, might have benefitted the world as much as they have injured it. Out of all these mischievous but lighter writings, we shall only men- tion one or two ; nor would they have been noticed in a little work of this na- ture, but for the popularity they have obtained among us, and our dread of that natural progress, the tendency of admiration to produce imitation. In the Life of Marmontel, written by himself, we have an extraordinary speci- men of decorous vice and accredited in- famy - of abandoned manners, to which reference is frequently made, at least to the characters which exhibited them, without the slightest feeling of their tur- pitude. Vices abound, and are revealed without the least apparent suspicion of their guilt. The intimations, indeed, are not repeated in the way of boasting, but look as if the writer did not think that concealment of the vice would raise the character he was eulogising. If there D. e
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