CHAPTER XV.
Le plaisir de la societe entre les amis se cultive par une ressemblance de gout sur ce qui regarde les moeurs, et par quelque difference d'opinions sur les sciences; par la ou l'on s'affermit dans ses sentiments, ou l'on s'exerce et l'on s'instruit par la dispute .-- La Bruyere.
There was a party at Monsieur de V--e's, to which Vincent and myself were the only Englishmen invited: accordingly as the Hotel de V.was in the same street as my hotel, we dined together at my rooms, and walked from thence to the minister's house.
The party was as stiff and formal as such assemblies invariably are, and we were both delighted when we espied Monsieur d'A--, a man of much conversational talent, and some celebrity as an ultra writer, forming a little group in one corner of the room.
We took advantage of our acquaintance with the urbane Frenchman to join his party; the conversation turned almost entirely on literary subjects.
Allusion being made to Schlegel's History of Literature, and the severity with which he speaks of Helvetius, and the philosophers of his school, we began to discuss what harm the free-thinkers in philosophy had effected.
"For my part," said Vincent, "I am not able to divine why we are supposed, in works where there is much truth, and little falsehood, much good, and a little evil, to see only the evil and the falsehood, to the utter exclusion of the truth and the good.

All men whose minds are sufficiently laborious or acute to love the reading of metaphysical inquiries, will by the same labour and acuteness separate the chaff from the corn--the false from the true.

It is the young, the light, the superficial, who are easily misled by error, and incapable of discerning its fallacy; but tell me, if it is the light, the young, the superficial, who are in the habit of reading the abstruse and subtle speculations of the philosopher.

No, no! believe me that it is the very studies Monsieur Schlegel recommends, which do harm to morality and virtue; it is the study of literature itself, the play, the poem, the novel, which all minds, however frivolous, can enjoy and understand, that constitute the real foes to religion and moral improvement." "Ma foi," cried Monsieur de G., (who was a little writer, and a great reader of romances) "why, you would not deprive us of the politer literature, you would not bid us shut up our novels, and burn our theatres." "Certainly not!" replied Vincent; "and it is in this particular that I differ from certain modern philosophers of our own country, for whom, for the most part, I entertain the highest veneration.

I would not deprive life of a single grace, or a single enjoyment, but I would counteract whatever is pernicious in whatever is elegant; if among my flowers there is a snake, I would not root up my flowers, I would kill the snake.