jours faibles ou infidèles, leurs lumières seront courtes; et lorsqu'elles voudront raisonner et spéculer, elles seront arrêtées à chaque pas par leur ignorance. Je ne parle ici ni de la métaphysique, ni de la géométrie. La science de la métaphysique appartient à tout le monde, est applicable à tout, et n'est presque utile à rien. J'en dirois presque autant de la géométrie. Voyons donc si elles s'empareront de l'empire des arts, et jusqu'à quel point elles pourront s'y livrer. Les arts mécaniques ne peuvent être de leur ressort. Dans les arts agréables je les vois encore forcées de renoncer à la sculpture, même à la peinture. L'impossibilité de voyager et de contempler les chefs-d'œuvre des écoles étrangères, la décence qui leur interdit l'étude de la nature, tout dans nos mœurs s'oppose à leurs progrès. Je crois qu'il est inutile de parler d'architecture. Les voilà donc réduites à la musique, à la danse et aux vers innocents: chétive ressource, et qui n'a qu'un temps limité."

(Possibly were Madame d'Épinay writing now she would qualify these remarks on women's artistic achievements. But the world still waits for a woman painter, musician, poet or sculptor of the first rank.)

"Concluons donc de tout cela qu'une femme a grand tort, et n'acquiert que de ridicule lorsqu'elle s'affiche pour savante ou pour bel esprit, et qu'elle croit pouvoir en soutenir la réputation; mais elle a grande raison néanmoins d'acquérir le plus de connaissances qu'il lui est possible. Elle a grande raison, les devoirs de mère, de fille, d'épouse une fois remplis, de se livrer à l'étude et au travail, parce que c'est un moyen sûr de se suffire à soi-même, d'être libre et indépendante, de se consoler des injustices du sort et des hommes, et qu'on n'est jamais plus chérie, plus considérée d'eux que lorsqu'on n'en a pas besoin. Quoi qu'il en soit, une femme qui, avec de l'esprit, du caractère, n'aurait même qu'une légère teinture des choses qu'elle doit renoncer à approfondir, seroit encore un objet très rare, très aimable, très considéré, pourvu qu'elle n'y prétendit pas." (The reader may well inquire if "know

ledge of the ancients" is so essential to philosophy.) "Bonjour, mon abbé; la suite à l'ordinaire prochain1."

But alas! the next letter does not continue the subject. Instead, it recounts her "disasters,"-"L'abbé Terray m'a ruinée par ses opérations. Je n'ai ni crédit, ni protections." That was written in 1771. All kinds of matters, ill-health, business, misfortunes conspired to hinder her. Years after, in 1776, she writes, "je me remets, non à travailler, mais à penser; et si ce bon état dure, je ne désespère pas de pouvoir continuer mes Dialogues sur l'éducation2." Those therefore who criticise her educational theory should remember that it was incomplete. Seven more years passed by, and she was struck down by the last of a long series of illnesses. Then, her faithful Galiani wrote (20 février 1783) to Madame du Boccage: "Madame d'Épinay ne m'écrit plus ; elle est malade, et c'est au milieu de ses souffrances qu'elle travaille, et qu'elle reçoit une palme académique. Je ne suis pas étonné du prix, mais de l'ouvrage, que je connaissais, et qui, à mon avis, eût remporté le prix dans toutes les académies du monde; c'est une véritable production de cœur."

Nearly sixteen weeks later, he wrote, also to Madame du Boccage, these desolating words: "Madame d'Épinay n'est plus! j'ai donc aussi cessé d'être !... qui mieux que vous soulagerait ma douleur, si elle était susceptible de soulagement? Mais il n'y en a plus pour moi; j'ai vécu, j'ai donné de sages conseils; j'ai servi l'État de mon maître, j'ai tenu lieu de père à une famille nombreuse, j'ai écrit pour le bonheur des mes semblables; et dans cet âge, où l'amitié devient plus nécessaire; j'ai perdu tous mes amis ! j'ai tout perdu! on ne survit point à ses amis."

The abbé Galiani was not, it must be admitted, a model priest: but, incontestably, he was-that perhaps still rarer being -an incomparably understanding, wise and faithful friend.

1 Lettres de l'Abbé Galiani, Vol. 1. pp. 203-205.

2 Ibid. Vol. II. p. 238. 3 "Le prix d'utilité" awarded by the Academy for Les Conversations d'Émilie.

ADDENDUM.

THE ABBÉ GALIANI.

WRITING upon the educational views of Rabelais, SainteBeuve remarked: "A wiser eighteenth century philosopher than Jean-Jacques-Galiani-lays down these as the two prime essentials of education, to teach children to bear injustice, to teach them to bear ennui.”

To the general reader, nowadays, the name may mean nothing, unless his “general reading” chance to have carried him into that brilliant circle of 18th century French thinkers and talkers of which Mme d'Épinay was not the least brilliant. To frequenters of that society, she and the gay Neapolitan Abbé have become inseparable in thought. The Abbé Ferdinand Galiani was born at Chieti, on the eastern coast of Italy in 1728: he died in 1787. In 1750 his most celebrated economic treatise, Traité sur la monnaie, appeared: nine years later the king of Naples sent him as Secretary to the Neapolitan Embassy in Paris. Galiani brought with him a reputation calculated to win him an entrance into the society where Diderot, Turgot, Voltaire, Grimm and Rousseau were conspicuous figures; and his natural gifts, his knowledge, his wit, his capacity for friendship soon established his welcome. Though his Traité sur la monnaie attracted considerable attention, he was remembered longer perhaps, if he can really be said to have been remembered at all, by his Dialogues on the Trade in Grain-Dialogues sur le commerce des blés. No less searching a critic than Diderot ranked these essays, on account of their dialectical polish and literary charm, with Pascal's Lettres Provinciales.

Readers of Mr John Morley's studies of 18th century Frenchmen and French life will remember that he referred to Galiani as "the antiquary, the scholar, the politician, the incomparable mimic, the shrewdest, wittiest, and gayest of men after Voltaire1." A suggestive description, by the side of which Sainte-Beuve's estimate sounds strangely.

It was only by accident, if there be such happenings as accidents, that Galiani wrote on pedagogy. Eleven of his books were printed and published; twenty-five remained in manuscript, no one of the thirty-six bears an educational title. He who desires to know Galiani's views on education must search his Letters, of which two volumes have been published2. The words, quoted by Sainte-Beuve, occur in one of the longer of those many letters which he wrote to Madame d'Épinay. He only served his royal master for a brief ten years in Paris; much against the grain, he obeyed the summons for his recall. To Madame d'Épinay, whom he addresses so often as "ma belle dame," of whom, at length, he writes to Madame du Boccage "Madame d'Épinay n'est plus ! J'ai donc aussi cessé d'être," to this incomparable friend he pours out his misery, compounded of exile from Paris, and of separation from her and Diderot. In a letter from Genoa, dated July 1769, he writes, "Je suis toujours inconsolable d'avoir quitté Paris, et encore plus inconsolable de n'avoir reçu aucune nouvelle ni de vous, ni du paresseux philosophe" (ie. Diderot) "Il parait que tout me pousse à m'éloigner de tout ce que j'aime dans le monde. L'héroïsme sera donc bien plus grand et plus mémorable, à vaincre les éléments, la nature, les dieux conspirés et retourner à Paris: oui, Paris est ma patrie: on aura beau m'en exiler, j'y retomberai."

.......

1 Diderot by John Morley, Vol. II. p. 254.

2 Lettres de l'Abbé Galiani à Madame d'Épinay etc., 2 vols., Paris, 1903, Bibliothèque-Charpentier.

3 On one occasion Galiani writes, "ma belle dame (car, quoique vous soyez très faible et fort maigrie, vous êtes toujours ma belle dame)."

Naples, 20 janvier, 1776.

Yet, as year follows year, the letters still come, all bearing the date from Naples, where the King kept him serving the State in one high administrative capacity or another. In 1770 the Abbé Coyer had published a pamphlet bearing the title Plan d'éducation publique. Madame d'Épinay demanded Galiani's opinion of it, at the same time offering her own. He dismissed it curtly, observing "His plan of education is certainly less valuable than your criticism on it." He hasards the opinion that she only spent time in criticising so worthless a plan for the sake of inciting him (Galiani) to propound some theory in its place. But he declares that he needs no stimulus; "Mon Traité d'éducation est tout fait."

To the reader's surprise, it is soon evident that the said discourse only occupies a couple of pages; was a shorter pedagogic treatise ever penned?

As it runs directly counter to its far more widely known contemporary Émile, and as it is buried away in these almost forgotten Epistles, it may not be amiss to translate the educational part of this friendly communication to Madame d'Épinay : "My treatise on Education is finished already; I prove that it is the same thing for man and for beast; it can be reduced to two principles, to learn to put up with injustice, to learn to endure ennui. What does one do when one breaks in a horse? Left to itself, the horse ambles, trots, gallops, walks, but he does it when he wishes, as he pleases: we teach him to move thus or thus, contrary to his own desire, against his own instinct-there is the injustice: we make him keep on at it for a couple of hours-there is the ennui. It is just the same thing when we make a child learn Latin, or Greek, or French : the intrinsic utility of it is not the main point; the aim is that he should habituate himself to obey another person's will (and so bore himself): that he should be beaten by a creature born his equal (and so learn endurance). When he has learned all that, he can stand on his own feet, he is a social being, he can go into society, he respects magistrates, ministers, rulers, without